The cardiac team was Anna, Crystale, Debbie, and Lorene, nurses and exercise specialists at St. Francis Hospital Cardio Pulmonary Therapy Clinic. For 36 sessions they prodded, cajoled and joked a class of survivors to consider exercise and diet as our future. After 40 minutes of aerobics and weights, they instructed us on the issues: food - calories, salt, fat - weight, pain, 911 (just call!), blood pressure (measured like a President at Walter Reed, four times in the hour), sex (if you can climb a set of stairs and if someone is up there waiting for you), pulse, EKGs, and (for some) sugar and insulin.

Learn something? Who me? Well, I had already decided my life style was so clever. But the team imprinted on my brain the upper and lower levels of effective aerobic exercise. Blood pressure tests - twice during exercise - gave me a mental thermostat how safe it is to push hard. Anna once slowed the treadmill because my pulse was too high - I learned what is too much. When Crystale made us laugh taking away the monotony - indoor bicycling is quite bizarre, all that effort, no fresh air, and scenery - same old same old. Crystale’s lesson: find a coach not solemn like a priest, and a gym not solemn like a church. And sweat. These exercise specialists told us that when done working (with lard butts like us), they go to the gym.

And so I graduated. Diploma on wall to prove I am in certifiably good health. I started bicycling to work again 11 weeks after the blue lights. I’ve made a new friend, the headwind, now a riding companion of choice. Not only is it aerobic but I have not had a single speeding ticket.

Next: Surgeon Aces Finals

“… sex (if you can climb a set of stairs and if someone is up there waiting for you)”