I went to see my new cardiologist today, she is now a very important person in my life, God help her.

When you have had open heart surgery, every visit to a cardiologist is fraught. I may feel fine, but I have felt fine before and been dreadfully wrong.

I remember telling Karen, my wonderful nurse practitioner, when I went to see her  four years ago, that I thought I was feeling off, I thought I had asthma and might need an inhaler.

She cursed at me in disbelief and muttered under breath, and said, “no, Jon, what you are having is a heart attack.”

In short order I was in an ambulance heading to the Albany Medical Center, where they perform open heart surgery.

“Is there any good news?,” I asked the cardiologist on duty when I was wheeled into the emergency room?

“Sure,” he said. “You’re not dead.”

I’m still not dead, and my brand new cardiologist, Dr. Nicoleta Daraban of Saratoga Springs Hospital says she plans to help me stay that way for awhile.

She read the bloodwork report she had ordered for me last week, and she was smiling. “Your blood is beautiful,” she said, she is from Romania and has a slight but atmospheric accent. Everything was good – blood pressure, cholesterol, heartbeat, A1C, blood sugar. In fact, she said, everything was “excellent.”

I don’t need to come back for six months.

Dr. Daraban also loves mysteries and we got off to a roaring good start.

She asked if I had any problems, and I said, only one, sometimes after I take my many medications for diabetes and heart disease I get drowsy an hour later. Once, I said, I even began to nod off after taking some pills and started to doze at my computer.

Otherwise, I’m fine.

She smiled, and suggested that perhaps what I was looking at on the computer was boring.

“What I was looking at,” I said somewhat huffily, “was my writing!” “Oops,” she said.

This cracked her up. I loved  her from that minute on, but to be honest, I didn’t really have any doubts. I can tell you that I have not met a lot of doctors in the past four years who can laugh much or take a joke.

Dr. Daraban is the crowning achievement in my four year campaign to only see women doctors, nurses or surgeons. A woman re-arranged my heart, women over see my diabetes treat, medications, general health and now, my heart. My primary practitioner is a woman, so is my nurse-practitioner and diabetes doctor, but Dr. Daraban is one of my better moves medically.

For the first time, I don’t have to see any men in health care.

I am not meaning to diss all men, I know there are many wonderful male doctors. But if anything has persuaded me that men and women are very different, it has been my plunge into the intensive side of health care.

Dr. Daraban is cheerful, she has a sense of humor. She is curious, she wants to know something about me. She is flexible and knowledgeable, but  not wedded to data and medical magazine reports.

We don’t spend much time together – that is no longer possible for most doctors, and it is not necessary for me. But she does talk to me, she does want to know enough about me to help me  deal with a broken heart.

She was very pleased with my heart today. She was delighted about my tests, which she said, were “terrific.” The groundbreaking new medication I have been taken in place of statins is working beautifully, she said, the side effects are worth it.

“You’ll just have to live with it,” she suggested. Nobody can get to be a cardiologist by being soft.

But I am so grateful to have found her (another woman, a nurse told me to get to her,”she is what you need.” I am sure I can be a difficult patient, I am sure I can be headstrong and disobedient. I am sure she is not impressed by any of that, she is clear as a bell and honest, and my heart and I have this quite wonderful feeling that we are in the best of hands.

It isn’t that I thought I was dying, but it is very good to hear I am doing so well.

I don’t dwell much on my Open Heart Surgery, but it does alter one’s perspective on life, and it was a great shock to me. I never imagined it happening to me, and coming so close to dying that day awakened me to many things.

One morning I was walking on a country road, a day or two later, they were taking my heart out and re-building it. Things have changed since then, and I am one of the very lucky ones. I was home and working three days after the surgery.

It is so important in a situation like this to have a doctor who listens, who you can talk to and be honest with. I know heart disease is not curable, and it could certainly come again, at any time.

This is a reality I have accepted and am comfortable with. But it makes the world of difference to know I have a cardiologist I can talk to when I need to, and who will be there when the time comes.

That is the face I want to see standing on the other side of the hospital bed, smiling down on me, looking at my chart.

I gave here three mystery writer recommendations, she loves mysteries, and three British mystery streaming recommendations, especially “Vera” on Amazon Video. The show stars the wonderful British Actress Brenda Blethyn, the best actor I have ever seen in a mystery drama. I encouraged her to read Elizabeth George.

Dr. Daraban scribbled it down, and we had a couple of minutes to talk about the movie “Roma,” which I wrote about over the weekend, and she is dying to see.

I called Maria as soon as I got in the car. “I feel like I came home,” I said, “my heart has found the doctor it was looking for.”