You Gotta Have Heart

The American Heart Association is a national voluntary health agency to help reduce disability and death from cardiovascular diseases and stroke.

Why am I telling you this? In bolded text, no less?

As it happens, two of my dear friends had heart and/or vascular related, life-threatening episodes last year. Mark (of whom I've written in the past) had a medicated stent implanted in the left anterior descending artery in his heart in September of last year, after a visit to his doctor (he was feeling sluggish) revealed his ticker was on the verge of shutting down entirely. Shutting down within a matter of hours, in fact. I saw him in October, and was floored when he told me, because he looked so blasted healthy, just weeks after the procedure. And he continues to do well, thanks to medical intervention. That, and the fact that he's now bionic.

An old friend from Los Angeles, Kimit, who now resides in 'Indifreakinana', suffered a stroke last April. Awful for him, his wife, and family, and awful for his friends who are so far away and get the news much after the fact. He, too, is on the road to recovery, but his has been a longer route than Mark's.

Mark is working with the American Heart Association for their 44th Annual American Heart Gala and Auction on Long Island on May 4. According to Mark (who knows of which he speaks), when the AHA reaches their impact goal by 2010,

"we will have 115,000 fewer cardiac deaths, 40,000 fewer stroke victims, 13.2 million fewer smokers, 12.5 million people with lower cholesterol and 20 million people becoming physically active."

I haven't seen Kimit and his lovely wife Samantha in years, and yet they both loom large in my heart (!), for their various kindnesses, condolences, and comforts they freely gave my struggling self during the dark days in the City of Angels. I've seen Mark a bit more frequently, and he has been - and remains- open, wise, funny, generous with his time and his resources; all of those things that friends are supposed to be but rarely are. Mark is that, and more.

A world without Kimit and Mark would truly be a lesser place. Really, I'm in no rush to experience it.

So, the pitch: You have a heart? Make a donation, any donation, to The American Heart Association. Every dollar counts. And check out the AHA website for further ways to contribute. Go ahead. I'll wait.

I leave you with this tidbit from one of Samantha's emails:

"If there is even a hint of high blood pressure among you and yours, take care of it. It is fucking scary."