Into the Heart, a medical odyssey

Walt Lillehei at work with
scalpel and forceps

Prologue: Code Red

University Hospital was in turmoil. Tomorrow's operating-room schedule was out and it seemed the chief of surgery had slipped over the edge. He had personally authorized an experiment in which, for the first time in history, two people might die in the same operation.

This was crazy.

Owen Wangensteen's surgical innovations had saved thousands of lives, but some (deep insiders, mostly) considered him overly aggressive with the knife. They pointed to an operation he had sanctioned for cancer that involved cutting a person in half and discarding everything, legs and all, below the waist. They pointed to his treatment for ulcers, which was removing a generous portion of the patient's stomach; traditionalists prescribed milk.

A small, peppery man, Wangensteen took pride in his University of Minnesota staff. And no one was dearer to him than Walt Lillehei, the surgeon who tomorrow might kill two patients.

What Lillehei intended to do — what Wangensteen had approved — was put a baby and his father to sleep and connect their circulatory systems with a pump and clear plastic tubing. Thus joined, the father would support his son's life while Lillehei opened the baby's heart and sewed up the hole that was destroying him. No one had ever done anything like this. No one had dared.

The university's chief of medicine was appalled when he learned of Walt Lillehei's plan. This really was crazy. The parents of this dying baby were from the north woods of Minnesota; Dad was a miner, Mom at home with their other children. They lacked the guidance of a hospital ethics committee, for none existed in 1954. They'd lost a daughter to the same incurable heart defect that was now taking their baby son. How could they refuse Dr. Lillehei, the only person to offer hope?

And then there was Lillehei!

Dashing Walt Lillehei, who favored gold jewelry, frequented all-night jazz clubs, and drove a fancy car — a Buick convertible, no less. Lillehei had come home from World War II with a Bronze Star and a passion for surgery. Not yet 36, he was already a professor. His boss, Owen Wangensteen, let him do pretty much as he pleased. If anyone could bring a Nobel Prize to Minnesota, surely it was this young maverick.

The chief of medicine went to the director of the hospital, who alone had the authority to stop an operation. The director summoned Wangensteen, and behind closed doors the three men had it out.

None of them could forget little Patty Anderson.

Read Chapter One: Rivers of Blood