Illustration: Denis Shifrin

I have just returned home from the Cardiac Rehabilitation Center where I spent the past five days rehabilitating after "Coronary Artery Bypass Graft surgery". The doctors call this CABG. The wife told me that they give each surgical procedure the name of a different vegetable in order to make it easier for them to remember which operation they must perform and thus prevent any mistakes. Doctors are very clever.

But maybe it would be best to start at the beginning. I was feeling fine. No chest pain, no shortness of breath, no nausea, and no etc. and had booked an appointment with the cardiologist for a checkup, at the wife's insistence. She felt that considering the amount we were paying for health insurance each month, we needed to visit a doctor at least once every two weeks. The wife is in charge of this sort of thing in our house, so on the duly appointed date I presented myself, as ordered, at his office. Modern furnishings, a water cooler in the corner and good quality magazines. He must be a good doctor. After a short wait, I heard the surgery door unlock and a red-faced secretary came out patting her hair and fixing the seams of her stockings, and she told me that I could go in. The doctor asked me a few questions, told me to lie down and began checking me over. Everything was fine, he said, but just for the record he was sending me for a cardiac ultrasound stress test. The test was no big deal and didn’t hurt at all which I attributed to our having ‘Maccabi Gold’. The doctor looked at the results, smiled broadly and told me that I needed to do an angiogram. I smiled as well as I thought how happy the wife would be. Eventually we were getting something expensive from the "Kupa". The wife set the angiogram up for a Thursday evening so that I would not need to waste my sick leave which we were planning on using for a short holiday in Eilat. The angiogram hurt a bit, but as soon as I shouted out that I had ‘Maccabi Gold’, they stopped the pain. The doctors were looking at pictures on a screen which reminded me of pictures of lightning on a stormy night. I was a bit surprised that they were looking at pictures at the same time as they were playing around with my heart but on the other hand, was grateful that the pictures weren't pornographic, which I worried could distract them. After a few minutes the doctor told me that there was nothing he could do, which, naturally enough, I interpreted as good news, and he said that he would speak to me back in the ward. While waiting for him to come and speak to us, the wife was working out how much this doctor must earn and tried to convince me that I should check if there was a cheap internet course for doing angiograms, as she was sure that he made more money than I did working at the factory. I told her to forget about it as I am sure that in a job like that you can't pretend to be sick while going off to Eilat for a holiday. Eventually the doctor arrived and explained that I needed this CABG thing. The wife immediately asked him how much a thing like that costs and on hearing his answer her broad smile widened even further. By now we were making a profit on the "Kupa", in fact, a good profit, and I still had my prostate which could be removed and probably a cataract operation or two. He told us that some of the arteries were 95% blocked and that I needed to have the operation done immediately. I told him that it simply wasn't possible this evening because the next program on the TV was "HaAch HaGadol" and my wife wouldn't miss that for anything in the world. So we scheduled it for Monday afternoon instead, which was good as it meant that I wouldn’t have to cancel my poker game on Sunday night. He started explaining what it would entail and how I would feel afterwards, but to be quite honest both the wife and I were already watching "HaAch HaGadol" and couldn't concentrate on both things at the same time.

We reported back at the hospital on Monday morning, where they did some tests, took some X-rays and put me into a bed in one of the rooms. Then a kind of barber came to the room, told me to get completely undressed and, believe it or not, shaved my entire body! I remember seeing pictures of men shaved like that in the magazines that the wife reads when she thinks I am not at home. They put me on a trolley and wheeled me into a freezing cold room where everyone was wearing a blue lumber jacket and a mask. It seemed a bit like a Wild West movie. Unfortunately, this time they didn't let me watch what they were doing, and the next thing I knew I woke up to find that I was kind of tied down to a bed and people were shouting at me to calm down and to stop going wild. Bells were ringing out of tune and I could hear the fire brigade siren in the background. After a while the wife came in as there was a commercial break on the TV show. I could hardly hear her but eventually I made out that she wanted to know if I would like her to buy me some bourekas and a beer. Before I could answer she was gone as they were playing the signature tune to signal the start of her TV program and she didn't want to miss anything.

After a couple of hours a nurse came and pulled a long piece of garden hose out of my throat and I could speak again. Except that my voice was so soft that no one could hear me and I didn't have the strength to shout. I stayed in this musical room for a day or so and then they took the bed, with me on it, and pushed it into a room with another man who had lots of wires and tubes sticking out of him. They told me that he was also a CABG. He didn't look too good and, quite honestly, I didn't feel too good. But each day things improved and I felt a little better. The food was good – egg and yellow cheese sandwiches with "botz" coffee for breakfast, schnitzel and chips for lunch and for supper, cheese bourekas and more coffee. Add to this the very shapely young physiotherapist with the short skirt who visited me each day and made me do breathing exercises, and the middle aged nurse with the big bosom who tucked me in each night, and I was happy to stay for as long as they were prepared to keep me.

As the Romans used to say, "All good things come to an end" and on day 6 they told me to check out of the ward, cross the passage and check in to the new Cardiac Rehabilitation Center. The name alone told me that this would be a classy place. They also told me not to lift anything heavy as it would put a strain on the new zipper in the center of my chest. So they phoned the wife and told her to come and give me a hand with the moving. She arrived looking really good and said that although none of my friends had called to ask after me, my boss had been really worried and had come around to our flat every night to see how I was getting on and to give her moral support. Honestly, I was surprised. I didn't think he even knew my name. It just goes to show that when the going gets tough, it's only your boss who can be relied upon to lend you his hand.

The rehabilitation center's only nurse received me as could be expected for a man with ‘Maccabi Gold’. She showed me to my room where my roommate was already installed. He didn't speak a word of Hebrew or English but he had a great tan. They told me he was from Kazakhstan, which I obviously knew all about from my favorite movie "Borat". I knew that he would wish to kiss me, but honestly, I didn't remember any part in the movie where before kissing, Kazakhstanis chew a few cloves of garlic. Wheewww!

The rehabilitation center had a program of lectures none of which seemed to me to have anything to do with the heart, but which we were supposed to attend. For example, they lectured us on what to eat. I found that really insulting and on purpose blocked my ears and didn't listen. Do they really think that at sixty I don't know what to eat? How do they think I have been managing up to now? On the other hand, there were lectures on sex which every one of the men came to. Here I learned a lot of new stuff and asked a lot of good questions. For example, they taught us that before you can have sex you have to climb two flights of stairs. That I never knew before. I asked them how long before having sex do I need to climb the stairs and what happens if we go to bed and I wasn't thinking about it and then when we are in bed I start to think about it? Can I climb the stairs in my pajamas and won't my neighbors get angry with me for puffing and panting in the middle of the night as I eagerly try to make it back up to our apartment? I knew that these were good questions because the lady who was giving the lecture just looked at me, shook her head and didn't answer. I had stumped her. There were also lectures on physical activity. What they really meant was physical activity other than sex. For the entire hour she spoke about walking. If I had known I wouldn't have come. I was positive that they were going to give more of the useful sex information.

Anyway the rehabilitation - holiday part is now over and I will have to go back to work soon. The wife says not to worry, that at my age something else is bound to crop up soon enough and I can visit a different rehabilitation center somewhere else while my boss comes to visit her every night to find out how I am.

*The author’s full particulars are available from the editor.