Students Get To Heart of Operating Room

Advocate Christ Medical Center cardiac surgeon Pat Pappas maneuvered his scalpel and saw with artful precision, severing fat and tissue and bone to reach his patient’s ailing heart.

As the suctioning of excess blood rang out, the 100 or so occupied seats in Carl Sandburg High School’s Performing Arts Center tightened. All around the faces of students and parents winced.

And Brooke Shepherd, one of the few individuals who had real cause to shutter, didn’t bat an eye.

At 17, the Sandburg senior has endured seven heart surgeries, five of which were open. She and her mother came to Sandburg on Saturday morning to watch “Live…from the Heart,” a video series presented by  and the Museum of Science and Industry that broadcasts bypass surgery for high school anatomy students.

Shepherd was born with Turner Syndrome, a chromosomal abnormality which causes heart defects, and first went under the knife at 2 days old.

“Her last surgery was a whole month at the Mayo Clinic, and she had all four of her valves worked on,” Sue Shepherd said. “Her heart has been dissected quite a bit—I mean, big sections taken out—and she has mechanical valves in there.”

“Her surgery is way more complicated than this,” Shepherd added, motioning towards the black screen where minutes prior Pappas and his surgical team harvested veins from a man’s thigh and grafted them to his heart to divert blood flow around a blockage.

When asked if she felt squeamish, Brooke Shepherd responded, “I don’t know,” as if it hadn’t crossed her mind during the two hour presentation, and then gave an unwavering and satisfied “no.”

What Brooke Shepherd lacks in height, at 4 feet 8 inches, she more than makes up in school, touting a 3.9 GPA and planning one day to return as a teacher.

Both mother and daughter said they attended the presentation because they had never before seen bypass surgery. Brooke will one day need a transplant—a thought which frightens her mother because the waiting list for a heart is long and uncertain.

Ben Shaw knows this too well. The 27-year-old Navy veteran suffered a sudden, massive heart attack about a year ago and must wear a mechanical heart device while he waits for a donor heart of similar size and blood type.

“I was unaware of my family genetic history. We didn’t have any knowledge (that) our cholesterol levels were really high,” he told the auditorium, advising, “Just get checked because I was active in high school, I was in the military for four years. There were really no signs that I was having these heart issues.”

Gail Prokop, community relations coordinator at Christ Medical and program moderator, further nailed the point home by urging students to make healthy lifestyle choices that mitigate the risk of cardiovascular disease—a leading cause of death in this country and a malady that doesn’t "discriminate."

“Every one has the potential to be Ben (Shaw),” she said. “Every one of you has the potential to have something lurking in there that you don’t know about.”

Since its creation in 2003, “Live…from the Heart” has reached 20,000 students across the country in an effort to expand the boundaries of the operating room.

After Saturday's video presentation and discussion from Prokop and other nurses, participants were treated to free blood pressure, body mass index and pulse screenings. Christ Medical staff and brochures were on hand in the auditorium's lobby to answer questions.

Roaming the boothes was Sandburg senior Ryan Parker, 17, who last year watched live open heart surgery at Christ Medical with his anatomy class. The experience left such an impression on his mind that he wanted to see it again and hear more about prevention.

“Our teacher told us to come this time with our parents and learn how to be healthier,” he said. “Honestly, it’s a big problem.”