Into the Heart, a medical odyssey

Betty and Patty Anderson

Chapter 1:
Rivers of Blood

Lloyd Anderson returned to Minnesota hoping to forget what he'd seen on the battlefields of Europe. His wife, Betty, needed to move on, too. A car crash when she was a teen had put her in a coma and she was different when she emerged. She was high-strung and fretful.

The end of World War II promised new beginnings. Lloyd came home a father; Betty had become pregnant while he was on leave, and their first child, Patricia Lee, had arrived in his absence on April 7, 1945. At 46 hours, it had been excruciating labor, but mother and daughter had left the hospital apparently healthy. Lloyd got a job in a Minneapolis tractor factory; Betty was home with Baby. With only an ordinary measure of luck, life at last would be sweet.

So maybe it was nothing when the Andersons began to think the blood vessels in their daughter's neck pulsated strangely. Maybe it was only imagination that, as Patty got older, her tiny chest seemed to bulge. New parents see the worst in everything. Still, better not to take chances. Betty took Patty, almost 2, to the family doctor.

Listening to her heart, the doctor detected a murmur.