Heart Study Tries to Give Me a Heart Attack

By Susan Esther Barnes

For 25 years or so I’ve been a participant in a study about heart disease called Cardia. I wrote about my most recent exam here.

I was picked for this study randomly – not because there was any reason to believe there is anything wrong with my heart. The idea is to get a bunch of folks in their early 20’s and follow them through their life, taking various measurements over time. Then, as we age and start having heart issues, they can compare their data on us over our life span, and look for correlations between the various measurements and who has heart trouble, to see if they can identify predicting factors and/or identify habits people can change to minimize their risk.

Being in the study has made me feel pretty confident about my cardiovascular system, because test results in the past have shown that I have no calcium built up in my heart, no signs of plaque buildup in the main arteries in my neck, decent cholesterol levels, etc.

I was looking forward to seeing this cycle’s test results in particular because this time they gave us a diabetes test. My father, alav hashalom, struggled with diabetes, so it’s something I think about, and want to avoid. But if I have it, or am heading in that direction, I want to know so I can start taking care of it right away.

The first page of the results, which I just received, showed my echocardiogram results. I assumed this page would just be a quick glance for me. After all, I know already that my heart is in good shape.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I read, “The purpose of this letter is to let you know that one or more reported values of your echocardiogram fall in a range that requires clinical follow up for your age group or gender.” (Emphasis in bold in the original). That doesn’t sound good. I was starting to worry.

So I looked down at the chart which shows the various measurements for my heart, compared to the values Cardia considers to be worthy of a person seeking medical advice. Dimensions are fine. Septal thickness is fine. Amount of blood being pumped is fine, etc. So, what’s wrong? Add frustration to my concern. I could feel my blood pressure rising. This can’t be good for my (apparently ailing) heart.

I read the offending sentence aloud to my husband, “The purpose of this letter…” to which he replied, “So, they’re saying one or more of the values is bad but they don’t say which one?” Finally, I noticed one sentence at the bottom of the chart, in small print. It said, “Other: Mitral valve prolapse with mild mitral regurgitation.”

Oh, for goodness sake! I was diagnosed with mitral valve prolapse when I was in college, before I ever entered the Cardia study. As I was told at the time, and as confirmed on the Mayo Clinic website, “In most people, mitral valve prolapse isn’t life-threatening and doesn’t require treatment or changes in lifestyle.” I am one of those people. The only symptom I ever have is an occasional irregular heartbeat, but that doesn’t happen often, and it doesn’t hurt. In fact, it kind of tickles.

In other words, there is no reason to worry about these results, or to see my doctor.

So I finally got to turn the page and see that all my other results were normal, including the glucose test. I don’t have diabetes, or pre-diabetes, and my cholesterol levels are good, too. Baruch hashem.

Of course, my CT scan results aren’t in yet, so there’s still an opportunity for Cardia to try to give me another heart attack.

The Binder

Enough time has passed since I wrote the following piece that I'm certain nobody can figure out who the boy in the story is. Extra credit question: To what, or whom, does the title refer?
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By Susan Esther Barnes

There was a period of time last year when I repeatedly asked God, “What do you want me to do?” and the answer I kept getting was, “Pay attention.” I kept trying to pay attention, but it seemed God might never give me the answer to my question. It took a while, but eventually it dawned on me that God wasn’t saying, “If you pay attention, I will tell you what I want you to do.” Rather, God was saying, “What I want you to do is to pay attention.”


Yesterday morning I was greeting people at the synagogue entrance when Rabbi Lezak asked if I was planning to stay for services. I told him I was, and he said, “There are a lot of boys here today. They are very excited…” I responded, “Maybe I should sit behind them, and if they make trouble, I should smack them on the back of the head?” He just smiled and walked into the sanctuary.

Often, when a lot of kids come for a Bar Mitzvah, they sit toward the back of the sanctuary. For some reason, these kids chose to sit in the front, to one side. Consequently, I couldn’t sit behind them, but I was able to find a chair beside them, in a place where I wouldn’t normally sit.

When I looked for a prayer book, I noticed a thin binder sitting in the seat back in front of me. Sometimes classes or meetings are held in the sanctuary, so I assumed the binder contained notes someone had left there earlier in the week. But something about the binder was bugging me, so I picked it up and turned it over. On the front was a label with someone’s name, and some doodles. I thought, “Yes, I was right, it’s some kid’s class notes,” and I put the binder back.

Then, I suddenly thought, “That name sounds vaguely familiar…Is it the name of the kid having the Bar Mitzvah right now?” A part of my mind told me, “Stop with the binder already. You’re supposed to be praying,” but I just couldn’t let the thought go. I gave into my compulsion and picked up the binder again. This time I opened it. Inside I found some handwritten pages, and in the pocket on the left was a typewritten sheet headed by the word, “Drash.”

“Okay,” I thought, this is the Bar Mitzvah boy’s binder, but maybe this is just an extra copy of his Drash.” I thought about waiting to see whether he needed the binder, and running up with it if he did, but as I pictured him standing there and starting to panic if he thought it was lost, waiting didn’t seem like the best option. By this point, the Bar Mitzvah boy was starting to walk the Torah through the congregation, so I took the opportunity to take the binder up to the front of the sanctuary, where I handed it to Rabbi Lezak, saying, “In case he needs this.”

When the Bar Mitzvah boy returned to the bimah, he set down the Torah, looked around, and then turned to his parents, making a gesture that looked like he was holding up a binder. Just as he was starting to look concerned, Rabbi Lezak handed him the binder. He looked relieved, opened the binder, took out his Drash, and began to read.

Maybe the boy won’t remember this small event, since everything turned out fine. But maybe, somewhere in his subconscious, there is the thought, “On one of the most important days of my life, when for a moment it looked like everything was about to go horribly wrong, the rabbi stepped in and saved the day.” Down the road, where might a thought like that lead? God only knows.