Friday, a milestone in my continuing recovery from Open Heart Surgery four years ago.

My heart attack and resultant surgery in 2014 and recovery triggered an epic reconsideration of everything about my health care, from my providers to medicines to specialists.

I have two chronic diseases, Diabetes 2 and Heart Disease. When I had my heart attack, I was seeing a  holistic  practitioner, I wasn’t even monitoring my blood sugar and the surgery jolted me into a different reality.

So did my high blood sugar numbers.

I was methodically killing myself, and I was astonished by my heart attack, my puffing up hills while walking should have alerted me. I knew I had to change.

Since then, I have surrendered mostly to Western ideas of medicine, although I have great respect for holistic care, and have scrupulously monitored my diabetes and A1C numbers.

That first number is currently at a very strong 6.0 and my average blood sugar level is 97.

My care is mostly in the hands of dedicated and communicative  Nurse Practitioners who take no nonsense from me and inspire me and help me to take care of myself. They always have new ideas for me to consider. And I do take care of myself.

When you have Open Heart Surgery, people are always coming up to you with a worried look and asking “how’s your health?” with great concern. Fine, I say, resisting the impulse to slug them.

Finding the right health care provider is important. My long-time NP, Karen Bruce, left the area recently to work in the Adirondacks, her replacement Janet Oliver is  great.

But Friday was not about all that, at least not directly.

It was about the final culmination of my years-long goal to put my health care entirely in the hands of female practitioners, doctors and NP’s. I finally did it, all of my health care providers are women. I can’t handle male doctors any more, I don’t want to see any. I know that seems like a horrid, even  sexist, generalization, and I am certain there are wonderful male doctors.

But they haven’t worked out for me.

Friday, this great transition was complete.

I went to Saratoga to the Saratoga Hospital Medical Group’s Cardiology Special Services and turned my heart over to Dr.Nicoleta Daraban, a Romanian cardiologist who studied in New York City and moved to Saratoga because she thought it would be a good place for her children to grow up.

This ended a three-year struggle with my male cardiologist to get off of statins, a mean wonder drug medicine that reduces cholesterol but can cause severe and sometimes crippling joint pain,  and to which I was seriously allergic.

I have not written about my struggles with rashes and hives, and my doctor’s insistence on staying with statins. It was life or death for me, he said, with two chronic diseases. So I kept on taking them while experiencing them sometimes debilitating side effects. This enraged Maria, who kept pleading with me to switch doctors. I was afraid to.

I don’t know if my doctor was right or wrong and don’t much care. The problem was I couldn’t really talk to him about it, he had no time or interest in what I wanted to say.

I am finally on a new anti-statin medication that I inject every couple of weeks and that is said to be a powerful medicine to keep cholesterol low, an important consideration for me. So far, so good. No pain, no allergic reactions.

This issue drove me to Saratoga in search of a second opinion, and hopefully, a  female cardiologist, I  hoped she would listen to me and understand what I was trying to do. And she did!

Lots of people can’t take statins, she said, and there are lots of good alternatives. My new medicine is one of them. You shouldn’t have had to suffer that much.

Her office has a 24/7 hotline, I can call anytime. I can also call her anytime, she said.

She said down with me for a half an hour, she said my heart was strong and her goal would be to make certain, if at all possible, that I would not need  heart surgery again in my life.

She went over my blood work and said it was excellent, she said she would not need to see me very often, but if I did need to see her, she was always there.

And we talked a bit about New York, about our children, about the virtues of living in the country for us, and the things we missed about the city.

This personal conversation only took a few minutes – I am not a needy patient – but it meant everything to me. It meant that everyone one of the doctors and nurses who treat me, now all female, know something about me and took the trouble to understand me as a patient, not just a  data point.

Dr. Karaban wanted to know me as well as my heart data, I think she thought both things are important.

We had a good talk about exercise, I said I had no  stomach for gyms or equipment, I am active, walk often and feel strong. Good enough, she said, do what comes naturally to you.

When Dr. Daraban asked me why I had come to her, I said Shiela Scofield,  another woman, and the Nurse Practitioner who oversees my diabetes care, recommended this practice, she said I would find what I needed there. And I could sense from the minute I walked into that office that it was true.

I felt I was in the right place for me.

My male doctors were all quite competent, I told her, I had nothing bad to say about them. But none of them knew how to talk to me or bothered to try beyond their data. In the past few years, I have come to trust, in some cases even love, these remarkable women who have helped me stay healthy and active and strong.

I believe they listened to me and care about me. I believe they have almost been honest with me, and never hesitated to be blunt when I needed to hear something I didn’t want to hear.

So Dr. Daraban completes my long search for female health care providers. I like her and trust her, she knows how to talk and took the time to do it.

Nobody can promise me a long life or perfect health. But at least they can know who I am and fight for me when I need an advocate and listen to me when I need honest answers.

That is no small thing for someone whose Open Heart Surgery altered the trajectory of my life those four years ago. For me, a long overdue  health milestone.