[HSF] longterm tetralogy result

[Rwmfglycar at aol.com]

Dear  folks,
I had a great experience this weekend. I had a call from South Africa from  a 
man in his 50's whose tetralogy was repaired in 1966. In that year my 
mother's  friend Mary, with the advice of  my mother who had been at the Mayo Clinic  
in the 20's, took her 10 year old son to have his Tetralogy repaired by John  
Kirklin. My mother decided to visit us in NY and also accompany Mary on her  
visit to Mayo. Young Nick had his tetralogy repaired succesfully. John told  
Mary that Nick had a blood vessel that had kept him  alive.  I presume this was 
a large collateral.  Mary wrote a book about the  experience which she called 
"The Vein of Life". (Like many lay people she mixed  up vein and artery). The 
book was interesting in its description of  an intense emotional attraction 
to Kirklin. She described it as like  "falling in love". This was intriguing to 
me because , unlike Denton  Cooley or Walt Lillehei or Chris Barnard around 
whom women  regularly swooned, Kirklin could not be described as sexy. Pure 
love I  suppose.
 Nick, who was severely disabled preop, is now 52 and continues  to exercise 
without difficulty. An Arrhythmia which developed 15 years  ago  has been well 
controlled medically. And last year the Mayo Clinic  sent him a long followup 
questionaire in South Africa. I had never met Nick  but a nonmedical friend 
of mine noticed his scar and asked him about it and he  spontaneously called me 
to tell me how grateful his mother had been for my  mother's support.
Bob
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