By John Kelly
Monday, July 17, 2006; B03

Exactly five years ago today -- about 7 in the morning -- I felt a crushing pain in my chest. On a scale of 1 to 10, this one went to 11.

This problem was my heart. It had kept me alive for 38 years, and now it was trying to kill me. A coronary artery had become blocked and, starved of oxygen-rich blood, my heart tissue was starting to die.

When I think of it now, I imagine millions of little cardiac cells valiantly holding their breath and then starting to succumb, one by one. I see Death moving across my heart like a combine slicing through a wheat field.

I'm too young to die, I think.

And Death says, "Nonsense! You're never too young!" And then he pops the clutch on the combine and downshifts with his bony hand.

"Ouch," I say.

There's still a bit of my heart that's dead -- though, thankfully, the rest of me isn't. My Lovely Wife dialed 911. The ambulance took me to the hospital. A doctor there punched a hole in my groin, snaked a catheter up to my heart and reamed me out.

I lay in intensive care for four days and then went home to start the rest of my life.

What's that old saying? Dying is easy, comedy is hard? What I discovered was this: Having a heart attack is easy, recovering from one is hard.

I don't mean the physical recovery, though that's no walk in the park. (Curiously, however, it did include walks in the park -- and around the mall, and on a treadmill.)

I'm talking about the mental aspects, the whole gee-I-almost-died thing. It messes with your head.

Bob Gelenter knows what I mean. He's never had a heart attack, but for years he suffered from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. "It's an enlarged heart," said Bob, 74, of Rockville. "It causes problems. Sudden death is one of those."

You can see how that'd be a problem.

In 1988, Bob had surgery at the National Institutes of Health that fixed the ailment. A year and a day after that, he saw something called Mended Hearts mentioned in The Washington Post's Health section ( http://www.mendedhearts.org ). It's a nationwide group of heart patients who visit heart patients, letting them know that -- believe it or not -- things will be all right.

Said Bob: "That's what this is all about, trying to let them overcome their fears and letting them know that as bad as it is, they're not all by themselves. Life goes on, and they will go on."

Bob and his fellow Mended Heart volunteers visit thousands of people every year. He still chuckles over one particular hospital-room visit.

The patient said, "I just had some unusual news. . . . The nurse practitioner just told me when I get home I can resume sexual activities."

Bob told the man that, yes, that was true. Sex puts no more strain on the heart than does climbing two flights of stairs.

"You don't understand," the man said. "I'm a Christian Brothers monk. I took a vow of chastity."

I've almost -- almost -- reached the point where I don't spend every other conscious moment thinking about my heart. There are still some reminders: the medicine I take every day, the tiny brown bottle of nitroglycerin pills I always have in my pocket. (At airports and government buildings I take the bottle out and toss it into the bin so it can be X-rayed along with my car keys and cellphone. No one ever asks what it is, denying me the opportunity to say, "That? Oh, it's a bottle of nitroglycerin.")

And there are anniversaries like this one. Today I will salute my fallen heart cells. I will toast those that lived to beat another day. And I'll take Bob's words to . . . well, to heart: Life goes on and so will I.

Two weeks. That's how long we have in our annual campaign for Camp Moss Hollow. Your gift -- of any amount -- will go toward helping area youngsters escape the city this summer.

To make your tax-deductible contribution: Make a check or money order payable to "Send a Kid to Camp" and mail it to P.O. Box 96237, Washington, D.C. 20090-6237.

To contribute online , go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/johnkelly . Click where it says "make a donation."

To donate by MasterCard or Visa by phone , call 202-334-5100 and follow the instructions on our taped message.

Our goal by July 28: $450,000 . Our total as of Friday: $294,722.85 .

My e-mail:kellyj@washpost.com