Chapter 24
1. I met Dr. Michael Freed at Zaftig’s Diner in Brookline, Massachusetts, for lunch on May 16, 2018. Subsequently, we had discussions over the phone and a correspondence through email. He was extraordinarily generous with his time, and the historical information in this chapter, both about my case and about the development of cardiology, emerges from those conversations.
Chapter 25
1. The Blalock-Taussig-Thomas history is probably the most chronicled of all the twentieth-century stories I recount in this book. Katie McCabe’s 2007 article in the Washingtonian, “Like Something the Lord Made,” is the first important work to retell what had been called the story of the Blalock shunt so that Thomas was given due credit for his role in the invention; the 2004 film of the same title was based on McCabe’s work. For my retelling, I’ve relied on the books about Taussig and Thomas’s article cited above, as well as the oral histories and interviews cited below.
2. Technically speaking, Dr. Koko Eaton is a cousin of Vivien Thomas, but he grew up around Thomas and always called him Uncle Vivien; I interviewed Dr. Eaton on March 27, 2018.
3. “Stop-gap,” in Thomas, Partners of the Heart, 11.
4. “I soon overcame,” in Thomas, Partners of the Heart, 14; “a reputation,” in Thomas, Partners of the Heart, 17.
5. “The profanity,” in Thomas, Partners of the Heart, 16; Woods quoted in Thomas, Partners of the Heart, 77; “She was tall… tetralogy of Fallot,” in Thomas, Partners of the Heart, 80.
6. Jim Murphy’s book for young readers, Breakthrough! How Three People Saved Blue Babies and Changed Medicine Forever (Boston: Clarion, 2015), does a lovely job describing these events; see also C. D. Kensinger, W. H. Merrill, and S. K. Geevarghese, “Surgical Mentorship from Mentee to Mentor: Lessons from the Life of Alfred Blalock,” JAMA Surgery 150, no. 2 (February 2015): 98–99.
7. “After eating,” in Alfred Blalock and Helen Taussig, “The Surgical Treatment of Malformations of the Heart in Which There Is Pulmonary Stenosis or Pulmonary Atresia,” JAMA 128 (1945):189–202; see also Anne Murphy, MD, and Duke E. Cameron, MD, “The Blalock-Taussig Thomas Collaboration: A Model for Medical Progress,” JAMA 200, no. 3 (July 16, 2009): 328–330; “During her recurrent spells,” in Baldwin, To Heal the Heart of a Child, 57.
8. On Blalock’s being anxious, see Murphy, Breakthrough!, 66; “Suture materials,” in Thomas, Partners of the Heart, 92.
9. “I guess you better call,” in Murphy, Breakthrough!, 67; “Many of us,” in Murphy, Breakthrough!, 64.
10. The description of surgery prep depends largely on Cooley’s 100,000 Hearts and Thomas’s Partners of the Heart, as well as the original publication by Blalock and Taussig, “The Surgical Treatment of Malformations of the Heart.”
11. “no bigger,” in Baldwin, To Heal the Heart of a Child, 63; “The patient’s vessels,” in Thomas, Partners of the Heart, 93; Longmire quoted by Mike Field in “Hopkins Pioneered Blue Baby Procedure 50 Years Ago,” Johns Hopkins Gazette, May 30, 1995.
12. Cooley quoted in Murphy, Breakthrough!, 70.
13. “Well you watch,” in Thomas, Partners of the Heart, 95; Harmel quoted in Murphy, Breakthrough!, 71; “You’ve never seen something so dramatic,” Thomas quoted in McCabe, “Like Something the Lord Made.” Though Thomas, Cooley, and the original Blalock/Taussig article (as I understand it) assert that Eileen Saxon became pink immediately after surgery, and though all my interview subjects tell me that this sudden color change was typical of a successful procedure, Thomas Morris, whose research in The Matter of the Heart is likely more thorough than mine, suggests that the color change was achieved in subsequent Blalock-Taussig-Thomas blue baby surgeries but not in the first.
14. Whittemore quoted in Evans, “The Blalock-Taussig Shunt,” 124; Thomas quoted in Murphy, Breakthrough!, 77; description of influx of patients is from Thomas, Partners of the Heart,.
15. Description of operating conditions is from Thomas, Partners of the Heart, 100.
16. On Blalock’s disparagement of Taussig and women, see Cooley, 100,000 Hearts, 55; for Taussig biographies, see also Mary Allen Engle’s reminiscence, “Helen Brooke Taussig: The Mother of Pediatric Cardiology,” in the Biographies of Great Pediatricians series in Pediatric Annals 11, no. 7 (July 1982): 629.
17. I had several conversations with Belen Altuve Blanton over the course of the ACHA convention in 2017, and I spoke with her over the phone and corresponded via email thereafter.
Chapter 26
1. The history of MRI diagnosis of cardiac function is from a conversation with Dr. Freed.
2. Dr. Freed’s letter, June 1999.
PART THREE
Chapter 28
1. Cooley, 100,000 Hearts, 101–102.
2. W. H. Auden, The Dyer’s Hand (New York: Vintage, 1968), 13.
3. Here and in much of my writing on Lillehei, I’ve relied on two sources: Forrester, The Heart Healers, and G. Wayne Miller’s biography of Lillehei, King of Hearts (New York: Crown, 2000); “I didn’t necessarily,” in Miller, King of Hearts, 22.
4. “I’ve certainly seen,” in Miller, King of Hearts, 28.
5. For figures on the federal budget, see Starr, The Social Transformation, 343; on penicillin, see Starr, The Social Transformation, 341.
6. My history of Harken depends largely on Forrester, The Heart Healers, and Morris, The Matter of the Heart.
7. “suddenly, with a pop,” in Forrester, The Heart Healers, 32–33.
8. This section on Forssmann comes from his autobiography, Experiments on Myself (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1974), and also from David Monagan, Journey into the Heart (New York: Gotham, 2007).
9. “cheerful, colorful,” in Forssmann, Experiments on Myself, 22; “golden twenties,” in Forssmann, Experiments on Myself, 42; “I’m afraid,” in Forssmann, Experiments on Myself, 55.
10. “I cannot,” in Forssmann, Experiments on Myself, 83; “I made a point,” in Forssmann, Experiments on Myself, 84.
11. “I knew,” in Forssmann, Experiments on Myself, 84.
12. “You idiot,” in Forssmann, Experiments on Myself, 85.
13. “I had a mirror,” in Forssmann, Experiments on Myself, 85.
14. On Forssmann and the Nazis, see David Siegel, letter to the editor, American Journal of Cardiology 80 (1997): 1643–1644.
15. “I put a call through to Goebbels,” in Forssmann, Experiments on Myself, 239; “wanted to tell Himmler,” in Forssmann, Experiments on Myself, 241.
16. For material on Cournand and Richards, I’ve relied on Oshinsky, Bellevue, and also Weisse’s oral history with Cournand in Heart to Heart; “had been received very critically by the cardiologists of the time,” in Weisse, Heart to Heart, 33; “You have your grant,” in Weisse, Heart to Heart, 34; Dr. Freed helped me understand Joyce Baldwin’s relation to Cournand and her work, as well as Richard Bing’s and Abraham Rudolph’s work catheterizing children.
17. National Institute of Health figures are from Starr, The Social Transformation, 342.
18. On NIH grants to build catheter centers, see Kirk Jeffrey, Machines in Our Hearts (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2003), 48.
19. Lillehei and Wagensteen dialogue, in Miller, King of Hearts, 29.
Chapter 30
1. The section on Bailey depends largely on Forrester, The Heart Healers, and Weisse, Heart to Heart; also Lorenzo Gonzalez-Levin, “Charles P. Bailey and Dwight E. Harken—the Dawn of the Modern Era of Mitral Valve Surgery,” Annals of Thoracic Surgery 53 (1992): 916–919.
2. “There are no more egotistical,” in Weisse, Heart to Heart, 79; “There is an old saying,” in Weisse, Heart to Heart, 80; “He died,” in Weisse, Heart to Heart, 81; “My mother,” in Weisse, Heart to Heart, 81; “I didn’t come from,” in Weisse, Heart to Heart, 92; “Early on,” in Weisse, Heart to Heart, 76.
3. “Severe bleeding,” in Forrester, The Heart Healers, 42.
4. “ended up telling me,” in Weisse, Heart to Heart, 78.
5. “O
bviously,” in Weisse, Heart to Heart, 77.
6. “Surgical procedures,” in Miller, King of Hearts, 150.
7. For material on Ishii, see Porter, The Greatest Benefit, 650.
8. For Father Miechalowski’s testimony, see “Testimony: Father Leo Miechalowski,” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, https://www.ushmm.org/information/exhibitions/online-exhibitions/special-focus/doctors-trial/testimony-father-miechalowski.
9. For Bigelow and Gibbon, see Forrester, The Heart Healers, and Miller, King of Hearts.
10. “Now that you’ve done that,” in Miller, King of Hearts, 41.
Chapter 32
1. Forrester, The Heart Healers, and Miller, King of Hearts.
2. “The others were taking risks,” in Forrester, The Heart Healers, 85.
Chapter 34
1. On eighteen attempts, see William S. Stony, “Evolution of Cardiopulmonary Bypass,” Circulation 119, no. 21 (June 2009): 2844–2853; “A two-hundred percent,” in Forrester, The Heart Healers, 65.
2. The description of surgery is largely from Miller, King of Hearts.
3. For the Pamela Schmidt and Mike Shaw surgeries, see Forrester, The Heart Healers, and Miller, King of Hearts.
4. “Admit you have a vegetable,” in Forrester, The Heart Healers, 73; “Too bad,” in Forrester, The Heart Healers, 74.
5. On Calvin Richmond, see Miller, King of Hearts, 162–164; “I wonder,” Miller, King of Hearts, 163.
6. “I think the medical world,” in Weisse, Heart to Heart, 98; “Dewey Dodrill’s machine,” in Weisse, Heart to Heart, 97.
7. On early heart-lung machines, see Forrester, The Heart Healers, Miller, King of Hearts, Cooley, 100,000 Hearts, and Weisse, Heart to Heart.
Chapter 36
1. For Zoll, Lillehei, and Bakken again, see Forrester, The Heart Healers, and Jeffrey, Machines in Our Hearts.
2. “How easily excitable,” in Jeffrey, Machines in Our Hearts, 50; “poor background,” in Jeffrey, Machines in Our Hearts, 51.
3. “The problem with the external,” in Weisse, Heart to Heart, 168; “Even my cardiac fellow,” in Weisse, Heart to Heart, 164; “We had a patient,” in Jeffrey, Machines in Our Hearts, 53.
4. “Getting a shock,” in Jeffrey, Machines in Our Hearts, 61–62; “drove the heart,” in Jeffrey, Machines in Our Hearts, 63.
5. “Many of these,” in Jeffrey, Machines in Our Hearts, 64.
6. Medtronic statistics, in Jeffrey, Machines in Our Hearts, 139, 151.
Chapter 37
1. I have given Dr. Davendra Mehta all the exposition here; the truth is that we did meet that day, and he did describe my arrhythmia and my defibrillator, and I took notes—but I took notes as a patient and not as a writer, and those notes are lost. Much of this information has been gleaned over the years from other doctors, including Dr. Fishberger, Dr. Rosenbaum, and also Nada Farhat, RN, who works with Dr. Rosenbaum. For information on conduction, arrhythmias, and defibrillators, I have relied on Forrester, The Heart Healers, Jeffrey, Machines in Our Hearts, and Kastor, Arrhythmias; for a good description, see “Conduction Disorders,” American Heart Association (AHA), http://www.heart.org/en/health-topics/arrhythmia/about-arrhythmia/conduction-disorders. The AHA website also has a good description of the function of an implanted pacemaker-defibrillator: “Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator (ICD),” AHA, http://www.heart.org/en/health-topics/arrhythmia/prevention—treatment-of-arrhythmia/implantable-cardioverter-defibrillator-icd. The AHA’s website is searchable, friendly, and a good, reliable place for patient information on cardiac disorders. For a description of ATP, see Elia de Maria et al., “Antitachycardia Pacing Programming in Implanted Cardioverter Defibrillator: A Systematic Review,” World Journal of Cardiology 9, no. 5 (May 16, 2017): 429–436. I was able to review all this material with Dr. Mehta after I’d written it, and I’m grateful to him for that conversation.
Chapter 38
1. For Mirowski’s story, see Forrester, The Heart Healers, Jeffrey, Machines in Our Hearts, and John Kastor, “Michel Mirowski and the Implantable Defibrillator,” American Journal of Cardiology (April 15 and May 1, 1989): 977–982 and 1121–1126.
2. “An imperfect solution in search of”: these words come from Dr. Bernard Lown, and they’re quoted in Kastor, “Michel Mirowski,” 1123; “I had a liberal view,” in Kastor, “Michel Mirowski,” 978; “Even the police,” in Kastor, “Michel Mirowski,” 977; “The schools were closed,” in Kastor, “Michel Mirowski,” 978.
3. “I saw the camp,” in Kastor, “Michel Mirowski,” 979; “I knew I wouldn’t be staying,” in Kastor, “Michel Mirowski,” 980; “A typical German professor,” in Kastor, “Michel Mirowski,” 980; “My wife,” in Kastor, “Michel Mirowski,” 981.
Chapter 39
1. Everything about Damon Weber comes from Doron Weber’s book, Immortal Bird (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012), and the breakfast interview with Weber in March 2018.
2. Weber, Immortal Bird, 63.
3. Weber, Immortal Bird, 121.
4. “My son bends,” in Weber, Immortal Bird, 169; “I think you’re overreacting,” in Weber, Immortal Bird, 87.
5. “D-man, listen to me,” in Weber, Immortal Bird, 335.
Chapter 40
1. “He felt porous,” and so forth, in Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin (New York: Doubleday, 1957), 20–21.
2. Interview with Meg Balke at the ACHA conference in Orlando and subsequently in email and phone conversations; Jenny interviewed at the ACHA conference in Orlando.
3. The information here is from decades of conversations with Dr. Marlon Rosenbaum, including interviews specifically for this book, but mostly in his office when he was examining my heart.
4. Forrester, The Heart Healers, 20.
Chapter 41
1. “Everyone who is born,” in Sontag, Illness as Metaphor, 1.
2. Laurie Edwards, In the Kingdom of the Sick (New York: Bloomsbury, 2014), 11.
3. Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 5, 7; “It is the intense pain,” in Scarry, The Body in Pain, 35.
4. “I do not know,” in Nabokov, Pnin, 20.
Chapter 42
1. Norman Mailer, Miami and the Siege of Chicago (New York: Random House, 2016), 3.
Chapter 43
1. Interview with Mark Roeder and Danielle Hile at the Philadelphia headquarters of ACHA on September 11, 2018.
Chapter 44
1. “the single most,” in Forrester, The Heart Healers, 325.
2. Quotes from Dr. Lin and Dr. Aboulhosn are from the ACHA Orlando conference.
3. Description of valve replacement surgery comes from discussions with Dr. Torres, in particular the interview in his office in August 2017.
The Open Heart Club Page 35
