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A letter to Roshi
from Jack Baiju Poggi

Dear Roshi,

On Monday (the day after I'd seen you) I got a call from my doctor saying that the exercise stress test had indeed shown a good posibility that one of my arteries was clogged. The only way to get a definite diagnosis would be to through what they call a catheterization: they invade you from the groin and work a catheter with a miniature video camera attached through your arteries. If they find nothing special, they close you up and send you home. If they do find a blockage of any kind, they are able to open it up immediately and then put in a "stent," a kind of "retaining wall" to keep the artery from closing up again.

The catch: I would have to have an office visit with the cardiologist before a date for the procedure could be scheduled, and the earliest date I could get for the office visit was June 1! . That meant I would have to walk around for ten days or more feeling as if I were carrying a time bomb with no idea when it was set to go off. (Quite an exercise in not knowing!)

I got through my class Monday just fine, but on Tuesday morning as I was setting out to go for a walk (instead of my usual run) I began to feel that my body just couldn't do this.I had no dizziness or fainting spell or chest pain, but I felt a bit "woozy" or light-headed and I had a terrifying expectation that I might keel over at any moment. (Talk about making up stories and then believing them!)

The anxiety lasted all day Tuesday, and I kept telling myself it was just that, nothing to worry about Jeanlee was in Troy, so I was home alone, and about 7:00 p.m. I suddenly found myself calling 911. I felt terribly stupid about it. I knew perfectly well that it was a panic attack, not a heart attack, but I couldnt't shake off the fear. Of course I tried to just be with it, and maybe that helped a bit.

EMS came right away. I asked to be taken to Mt. Sinai, where Dr. Chun (my doctor) was in residence and where I had had the stress test. At first they said they couldn't do that. Then they relented.

A young intern in the ER took my EKG and also pulled up the stress test. We talked at length about my history and symptoms, and then he went to confer with the head doctor. The head doctor came over (I liked him immediately) and began by tellling me that my EKG was normal. I started to express enormous relief, but he added, "There's a but here." I looked at your stress test, and it's definitely positive." (I'm always a bit taken aback by the way the medical profession uses that adjective: it sounds like good news!)

Then he laid it on the line: "There's no question that one part of your heart is damaged in a way that could set off a heart attack. We don't really know if your present symptons are due to anxiety or to the heart problem. But we prefer to play it safe, keep you in the hospital tonight, and have you go through the catheterrization tomorrow.

Never have I agreed to a proposition so promptly. I called Jeanlee and David, and she said she would come down the next morning (Wednesday) even though she had planned to go to court with David on Thursday. But David said he would go by himself, and if he hadn't had an electronc bracelet round his leg he would have come down to New York too.

The proceure was relatively simple and painless, and I was awake the whole time.. Dr. Scharma, the head guy, is renowned for this kind of work. He told me right away that one of my coronary arteries was "99 per cent closed off," He cleaned it out and put in the stent with no problems at all. There is another artery (or part of this one, I'm not sure), that had some less serious clogging, and they said I should come back on Tuesday (the 31st) and have that one cleared out.

They sent me home Thursday morning, and I've been here ever since, no students or classes, plenty of time to rest and meditate. Still feeling a bit woozy and apprehensive, but I am so grateful. Grateful first that Dr. Chun took my symptons seiously enough to order the stress test--and that something in me took them seriously enough too, despite all evidence to the contrary, for me to dial 911.

Grateful to the EMS for taking me to Mt. Sinai (if they'd taken me anywhere else, without the stress test, I might have been diagnosed as a hypochondriac and sent home.

Grateful, mostly, for the time to meditate. I see over and over again how busy my egomind is, concoting all thse elaborate schemes to accomplish what is impossible: guaranteeing that it will stay alive.

And in those few moments when I recognize what it is doing, I become aware that I can just step back and let it crank away, like one of those old-fashioned mimeograph machine, while I enjoy a moment of peace, at last.

Love, and thank you for your teaching

Baiju


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