The Brooklyn Papers file / Greg Mango

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Borough President Markowitz is recovering at Maimonides Medical Center after experiencing harrowing chest pains that required the insertion of two cardiac stents.

Markowitz checked himself into the hospital on Saturday after feeling a dull ache in his chest. The hospital’s medical staff quickly determined that Markowitz needed a stent to open up clogged coronary arteries.

Two stents were installed — a fairly common procedure nowadays — and the borough president never lost consciousness.

“It was like nothing I’d ever felt before,” Markowitz told The Brooklyn Papers in an exclusive hospital-bed interview.

“It was a dull pain. But once I got to the hospital, I knew I’d be all right.”

The procedure was over before Markowitz’s wife, Jamie, could even make it back to the hospital after dropping off the Beep and returning to the couple’s Park Slope home to feed their parrot.

In the interview, Markowitz admitted that some of the fault for his clogged arteries lies in his own love of Brooklyn’s culinary heritage.

“I’m going to be eating fewer pastrami sandwiches,” he vowed. “But part of it is hereditary. My father died at 35 from a heart attack. I have to be vigilant. I tend to be heavier than I should be.”

The news broke Monday afternoon, with a statement put out by Markowitz’s office.

“I want all Brooklynites to know that I’m doing great and feeling fine, and can’t wait to get back to work for Brooklyn,” Markowitz said in the statement. “I guess I’m now a member of one of the largest 60-plus groups in America — the stent club.”

The statement added that Markowitz was “eating and [is] in excellent spirits.”

The borough president recently kicked off his annual “Lighten Up Brooklyn” weight-loss campaign — but has waged his own see-saw battle with weight over the years.

“The messenger is flawed, but the message is a good one,” he said at the campaign kick-off last month. “Brooklyn has an obesity epidemic.”

©2006 Community Newspaper Group