P
Phyllis
A good reminder of how far we have come!
Cases
From the ?Dark Ages? of Heart Surgery, a Lesson for Today
By DAVID SHRIBMAN
Deena Newberg was the girl across the street four decades ago, and in the last few weeks I hadn?t been able to stop thinking about her. In the middle of the afternoon I had taken to wondering: How?s she doing? For days on end I was obsessed with this question: What?s she doing?
I don?t carry a torch for Deena Newberg, whom I haven?t seen since 1969, and I?m pretty sure she hasn?t given me a second thought since ninth grade, and so there?s nothing sordid about this story, though it is an affair of the heart ? a broken heart.
It was 42 years ago that Deena had open-heart surgery, back when it was a terrifying operation, though I hasten to add that it?s not exactly trivial today. So not long ago, as I was recovering from my own open-heart surgery in a very different era, I called Deena right out of the blue just to find out how she was doing and what she was doing. What I heard was the unforgettable story that I was too young, or too squeamish, or too incurious, or probably just too shy to learn back then. (I didn?t possess the courage to talk to an actual girl, even a pretty one who lived right across the street, until I was a high school senior.)
But Deena?s story is remarkable, even more so because it makes the miracle that Dr. Bradley S. Taylor performed on my tired old heart at UPMC Presbyterian in Pittsburgh a few weeks ago seem unremarkable in contrast, and because with six words Deena put in perspective all the frustration I am having with my own relatively uneventful but short-of-breath recovery. They are more powerful than any six words I?ve ever typed: ?You?re alive. That?s a great thing.?
Here is Deena?s story: She was born with just about everything wrong with her heart. She had exploratory surgery in the first grade, then four years later bravely undertook the open-heart surgery that so stunned Miss Waterman and Mrs. Nelson and all of us in the fifth grade at Stanley School in Swampscott, Mass.
?This was the dark ages,? Deena said on the phone the other night. ?It wasn?t like it is today, when you?re in and then out.? At 53, the woman has a way with words.
Over all, Deena missed two years of school, which is why she did not appear between Bob Murray and Pam Nickerson ? her rightful place alphabetically ? in the Alice Shaw Junior High School yearbook four years later. She had a lot of roommates in Children?s Hospital Boston. Most of them died, one of them as her brother, Michael, wheeled the frail young patient, one of Deena?s ward friends, down the hospital corridor just to give her a little change of scenery.
There is more. Our little town held two blood drives to gather the 14 pints Deena would need for the operation. She was fully awake during some of the terrifying preparatory procedures, the same ones I had (though I was safely under sedation the whole time). For seemingly interminable periods she was in an oxygen tent. She remembers how her father unzipped that tent carefully, so he could hold her hand. Her mother had to prepare every meal especially for her (no lines of salt-free food in those days at the Beach Bluff Supermarket down the street). Nurses wrapped her legs in hot towels. And the most remarkable thing of all: the doctors were at her house a lot.
There was no aftercare (the term didn?t exist) and no cardiac rehab program (such things were years in the future).
?I was weak and I was sick,? she said. ?I spent a lot of time on Stanley Road looking out the window watching everybody play.? That sentence pierced my own recovering heart. I played ball with Richie Remis and John Weighs on the street right there in front of her house maybe 200 days a year.
?No one had this surgery then,? said Deena, who may be one of the longest-living open-heart survivors. ?It?s like going from the dark ages to the microwave oven.?
Deena?s doctors included Robert E. Gross and Alexander S. Nadas, both pioneers in heart treatment for children. In a tribute to Dr. Gross after he died in 1988, two prominent surgeon-scientists wrote in a scholarly journal that he had ?demonstrated to the world that anatomical study and a carefully planned surgical approach? could lead to ?successful treatment of very ominous and previously forbidding diseases of the heart and of the great vessels.? Dr. Nadas, who died in 2000, was honored by the American Heart Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Deena, at the time of her surgery, knew nothing of the stature of her doctors. To her they were her docs, nothing more.
Today Deena Newberg Lane is the mother of two grown children. She is a breast-cancer survivor. She helps elderly and sick people in their homes on the North Shore of Boston. She plays a little tennis. She lives a perfectly normal life, maybe perfect because it is so normal.
?I would say that I am healthy,? she told me. The simplest things are the most remarkable. You learn that after heart surgery.
Hers is a truly heartfelt story. My bet is that it made you feel pretty good. I can tell you that it sure made me feel better, and that was even before she told me: ?You?re alive. That?s a great thing.?
That?s Deena?s story. It?s Deena?s lesson, too, for all of us.
David Shribman, a former Washington correspondent for The New York Times, is executive editor of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where this essay first appeared.
