Hump Day Nudge: A heart to heart with a heart surgeon

I love this video done by Soul Pancake and the Oprah Winfrey network that interviews Dr. Kathy Magliato, a heart surgeon. For someone who likes biology, it’s interesting. For someone like myself who works does a different sort of work with hearts, day after day, it’s truly profound.

Two moments stopped me cold:

The first: Barney Clark’s wife, the first recipient of an artificial heart–a huge risky, never-before-done procedure–as she is hearing of all the risks, the dangers, the possible complications–remember, this is huge and risky and is new ground-breaking medicine…when she is asked if she has any questions, she has just one:

If you do this surgery, and you replace my husband’s heart with a machine, will he be able to love me?

Profound is the desire to love and be loved, isn’t it. We are created to want to be loved…and in the middle of a life threatening crisis…it’s still all about love–human connection.

The second: Dr. Magliato is a woman who deals with death often as a heart surgeon. It’s particularly difficult when she serves 6 months on a paediatric cardiac unit working with congenital heart defects. How does a person cope dealing with witnessing such pain and death? She says:

“My heart was hard…I had this shield.. this full metal jacket”

Then she talks about how her own heart was changed. After 11 days of constant care of a critically ill infant girl, the nurses hand her the little girl’s body. For the first time, she holds the little girl and sees her as a little person, rather than body parts that needed medical care. She goes on to say:

Holding a baby that had just died…and then I did something that nearly broke me in two…”I took that child and I walked her down to where her parents, and I gave her to her mom…so she could at least hold her during that time of grief. And when you asked me if being a heart surgeon has changed me, that one moment I realized that I could take off that jacket, that I could connect with a patient, and that I wouldn’t break in two.

That is a powerful moment. I’ve seen it before…where someone has been fighting a powerful feeling by putting up a wall against it, absolutely convinced that if they let themselves feel that feeling, it will finish them off, they will never recover, the dam will burst past the point of no return. And so the wall is up, protecting them from the pain…but putting a barrier between the person and joy, connection, warmth, nurture and so much more.

And then, somehow, they allow themselves to feel that feeling that they thought would kill them. And it’s hard. And painful. But they don’t die…and now they can reach out and be close to others in a meaningful way. Hugs become less wooden. Laughter becomes more authentic. Joy bubbles up unexpectedly. Freedom flourishes.

It’s a beautiful thing. Listen to the doctor and be inspired to take care of your heart and the hearts of those around you today.