Down a Starry Pathway

The recurrence of pain came about a month ago. I was hurrying down the driveway that leads from the mailbox to our house, a distance of maybe 50 yards. It was night and the air tingled with the icy consistency of chilled champagne. The pain hit hard.

I remember stopping and for some reason looking up, waiting. There are no street lights where I live, no neon signs to diffuse the darkness, and the stars glow with polished intensity in their cosmic isolation.

I stared at them as though I expected my fate to be written in the shifting galaxy of time and space, but it wasn’t. The pain passed and I moved on down the starry pathway, wondering.

Angina had come to call again.

I’m among 4 million Americans who suffer from attacks of what my doctor--I mean, my caregiver--refers to as discomfort, which irritates the hell out of me. I have an intense dislike for euphemisms.

The last time I had angina I ended up needing a double bypass. That was seven years ago. Afterward, a cardiologist from France told me I was good for at least another 20 years. He also told me to drink plenty of red wine.

God knows, I’ve carried out his drinking instructions but less than a decade later I’m having chest pains again. Had I known I was in for them no matter what I did, I’d have stayed with martinis.

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I don’t worry a lot about dying. I figure any years I’ve been given since the Korean War constitute extra time and if I can still fit in another few thousand words before I go, that’s good enough for me.

On the other hand, I don’t court death either, so I started going to a cardiologist again, this time a solemn young man who specializes in nuclear medicine.

He gave me nitroglycerin tablets to ease the angina pains that were coming on with disturbing frequency, and said we’d watch it. He also told me not to exert myself, which at least meant a reprieve from taking out the garbage and hauling wood to the fireplace.

Cinelli looks upon it with suspicion, as though I’d worked some kind of Faustian deal with him, promising to leave him my body after death if he’d order me specifically not to do any of those household chores I dislike. Anything to avoid work around the house.

The pain isn’t devastating. I don’t whine like a dog when it comes. But it’s almost always there, dull and persistent, like a vague reminder of mortality. The cardiologist finally called for a couple of tests to make certain I wasn’t about to crash on his watch.

I had radioactive isotopes injected into me and then did a treadmill test, both of which turned out OK. When he informed me that things looked good he seemed to be suggesting that it must therefore be something I was deliberately doing to cause all this trouble. It would be my own damned fault if I died.

However, not to take any chances, he ordered an angiogram and that’s where I am now, waiting for it to happen.

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The weather has turned mild again so I can go outside and look at the stars without freezing. The Cardo, as Cinelli calls him, says he’s not sure what’s causing the angina attacks, but it may be the cold. In addition to exertion and stress, I am also to avoid cold.

So I don’t take out the garbage and I throw on a jacket when it’s cold, but stress is something else. It’s not possible for me to avoid that. A journalist without stress is a runner without legs. We need the angst to propel us forward. Looking at stars does, however, bring me comfort. I imagine myself among them, showering flecks of lights over the world, like glitter on a Christmas parade.

The American Heart Assn. says that the risk of death from coronary heart disease (familiarly known by the AHA as CHD) increases at an inverse ratio to a person’s education.

In other words, people with M.A.s in runic poetry are less likely than third-grade dropouts to die of a heart attack, but more likely than those with double PhDs in astrophysics.

The only statistic that makes sense to me is that one out of one of us is going to die sooner or later . . . but I do find myself wishing in a way I’d stayed in college long enough to at least get a bachelor’s degree.

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On Monday afternoon, doctors cleared a small blockage in Martinez’s circulatory system. He expects to be back on the job next week. His column appears Tuesdays and Fridays. He can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com