I am approaching the second anniversary of my open heart surgery, I think it came right after the July 4th weekend of 2014. Today was my once-a-year visit to my cardiologist, Dr. Steven Annisman of the Southwestern Vermont Medical Center. I only see Dr. Annisman once a year, I get an EKG, he checks my heart and asks me a half-dozen questions – any pain, shortness of breath, etc.

He came to Vermont from New York, he is a shy man, I think, with a quick smile and a great love of music. We aren’t close friends or anything, but we do have this tradition in our short relationship of recommending an album or new group to one another when we meet.

I recommended the new Paul Simon album Stranger to Stranger, we talked about him for a few minutes, and he recommended a new group called Snarky Puppy, originally from Texas, not based in Brooklyn, of course.

Dr. Annisman lights up when talking about music.  He agreed to be photographed, he didn’t want to see the photo.

As it typical in the modern health care system, we get about 10 minutes with one another after the nurse checks me out, and that  is once a year. He checks the pulse in my feet, and of course,  my heart.

Dr. Annisman follows heart data closely, we don’t range too far from it. Like most male doctors, he doesn’t talk a lot, or have too much time. I like him, he is honest and his smile is too warm to be anything but genuine. I always try to see nurse-practitioners and always ask for women, if possible.

They are the only ones who will talk to me about the experience of open heart surgery.

But I trust Dr. Annisman, he seems to know his stuff. And he has good taste in music and movies. We are both refugees from the city.

My EKG  was fine, so was my blood pressure, cholesterol level, etc. He asked me if I had any questions, and I asked, since I am doing so well, if I could stop taking the beta-blockers, they sometimes made me drowsy and tired.

He said the data suggested they are highly effective in preventing heart attacks, strokes or seizures, at least for three years. There is no date available after that, we can discuss it again next year, perhaps I can get off of them at that time, he said,  but he wanted me to stay on them.

We had this same struggle last year about the statins, he insisted I stay on them, but reduced the dose. Open heart surgery, especially when coupled with diabetes, is not something you are ever done with. I take it seriously and am proud of myself for the way I deal with it. I would be dead now without modern medicine, for all of its troubles.

I dug in a bit about the beta blockers, and he agreed to cut the dose in half. That seems to be his default position.

We’ll see how that goes. I might stop taking them before next year if the drowsiness continues. I accept data, but don’t wish to be a slave to it. Doctors can’t back off from date-driven medicine or go beyond it much, I think, government bureaucrats and insurance companies insist. I’ve been nosing around about beta-blockers, they are controversial and there is much debate about them.

They are meant to reduce inflammation and slow the heart down a bit, so that it lasts longer. But nobody knows how much longer, and as we all know, the medical profession often keeps people alive beyond reason or rationality. When it comes to decisions like this, we are on our own.

Curiously, there is no one to help. They can take your heart of your body and make it better, but they cannot talk to you about what has happened. Nobody in the system has time for that.

No doctor will ever tell me to enjoy my life now, and not worry so much about prolonging it. Or ask me how I feel about prolonging my life.  But that is what I think I ought to do, opt for quality of life now, not eternal life.  Because no one really wants to talk to me about it, the open heart surgery has made me more independent and confident about my decisions.

Many of them are good, but I guess we won’t know for awhile.

That last part is fuzzy, and there is no category in data I hear about  for fuzzy.

It was a good visit, I am fine, and doing well, my heart is beating strong and clear. My surgery seems a long time ago, and I am grateful for it.

It saved me, made me better. Maria and I often walk together up what we call “heart hill,” the road I could barely make it up that morning two years ago, when I was gasping for breath and ended up in an ambulance, heading for Albany Medical Center.

I love walking up that hill, not even needing to take a breath, and give myself one or two hallelujahs.

Open heart surgery is a great big deal to the people who experience it – they do stop your heart for a bit and rebuild it – but for doctors, it is just another operation. I imagine Dr. Annisman sees more than 25 heart patients a day.

I think I will never have the conversation I really want to  have about it. I did nearly die, that does get into your head.

When I had dealt with the beta blocking issue, Dr. Annisman and I shook hands. “See you next year,” he said, and he was gone.

By tomorrow morning, I won’t be thinking about it either. That is a pretty amazing thing.