hospital

Many are the mysteries of the heart. The heart of the soul and the heart of the body. The human body and the body politic. My Max and our cardiac culture.

What happened to Max could happen to me, or maybe even you. One day, you’re walking around, shopping, dancing, having sex, producing shows and making pesto, free and blissfully ignorant of the ticking time bomb behind your ribs. Then, for whatever reason, you take a “stress test” which reveals that your arteries are clogged with extreme “blockage” (no relation to me!). Next thing you know, you’re on the fast track to a quadruple coronary artery bypass, a prisoner of western medicine, in quite literal bondage to the masters and mistresses of cardiology. These are the high priests of modern society, the highly trained and esteemed men and women in the monogrammed white coats, wielding their stethoscopes, their angiograms and their very sharp knives.

Upon consulting your charts like educated gypsies reading high tech tea leaves, they bless and curse you with their holy diagnosis. The cardiologists talk to you like talmudic scholars, weaving scientific facts with emotional considerations, matters of the heart. Then there are the cardiovascular thoracic surgeons whose power lies in their hands. They're the car mechanics of cardio and, having performed “thousands” of these human valve changes before, they’re quite confident in their ability to fix whatever’s under your hood, or ribcage, as the case may be.