The Angina Monologues
Summer heat can raise the body temperature and result in increased blood pressure and heart rate, which can be harmful for someone with angina, says the Preventive Cardiovascular Nurses Association (PCNA).
I’m worried about angina. I come from a generation that talked of heartburn and not angina. Angina? What’s that? I never heard my father say the word. Angina was for sissies. Indigestion was another word dad used.
But it’s angina. Let’s say the word together. Angina. Also known as angina pectoris: chest pain caused by myocardial ischemia—a condition in which the heart does not receive enough oxygen. That’s not for sissies. Is it, dad?
“Oh, I must’ve eaten too much,” he’d say. “Heartburn. Indigestion.”
It took me years to confront him:
“Dad, it might be angina. You should see a doctor.”
“See a doctor? You see a doctor.”
I was told that it’s not manly to complain about chest pain. Short of breath? Muscular constriction? Tightness of the upper body? Suck it up, be a man. In France they call it mal de foie. In Spanish countries it’s: Tengo dolor de pecho. In Italy you hear grown men, fathers and responsible citizens, say: Ho dolore di cassa. In Japan, it’s muneyake. Me? I’m worried about angina. What’s everyone afraid of? Angina, angina, angina. It sounds like a medical tool and not something we need to know about our bodies.
Why are men so ashamed? What about that word “angina” is more painful than getting feelings out into the open? Angina has become a dirty word—a secret, an experience to deny rather than acknowledge openly.
I’m worried about angina. It starts with chest pain and it ends with a heart attack. Boom. One minute you’re on the treadmill and the next you’re flat on your back. Indigestion? It’s angina. Go on, say it. Angina.
A businessman I know—smart, successful, physically active—tells me he has no time to see a doctor. “I’m fine,” he says when I ask him about the chest pain he feels after our game of tennis. “Drinks on me.” Over drinks: “It’s an all day proposition—sitting in a doctor’s office, waiting to be seen. I can’t take time off work.”
“You can’t take time off work? Work?” He talks about work when he might have angina? “What if it’s angina? People die from angina.”
“Lower your voice,” he says. He takes the clear plastic toothpick out of the gin and pops an olive into his mouth. “It’s not what you think. It’s not that.”
“Not what, Fred?”
“You know,” he says. Suddenly, this captain of industry is demure.
“No, I don’t know,” I say. “Say it. You can’t even say it, can you?”
“It’s the humidity,” he says finally.
But what if it’s not the humidity? What if it’s his heart? What if he’s about to have a heart attack?
“What if it’s angina?”
“I gotta go,” he says and gets up to pay the check.
In Sweden they say it’s halsbrann and in Budapest they call it gyomorégés.
In ancient India angina was treated by shaman—men were wrapped in sheets of wet linen, rolled in moist clay, and given cool, first growth Darjeeling tea to drink. Calm down, lower your blood pressure, meditate, eat more vegetables, and exercise regularly. Nowadays look at Bombay and New Delhi: men in the same pain, clutching their chests, and blaming the curry.
I am worried about angina. Have you ever thought about angina? The shortness of breath, chest constriction, radiating pain, sense of suffocation, and feeling of a heavy weight on your chest…