Today, I opened the chest of Betty and we looked for her heart. The organ of romance, love, affection and all the emotions that people have. The subject of poems, novels, songs and movies.
How many lines of prose has this muscle weighing between nine to ten ounces produced?
The day began as I took an electric circular saw, which is rather like a large Dremel, not the circular saw a carpenter uses, and began cutting through the ribs of the chest. Around the thoracic cavity I went, through the clavicle, the sternum, the ribs until finally we could begin to lift off the entire anterior portion of Betty's chest.
Connecting the chest wall to the interior is a membrane called the parietal pleural membrane, with parietal meaning 'pertaining to wall' meaning the body wall. This membrane surrounds the entire chest (thoracic) cavity, like a large bag. Around each organ is a visceral membrane, for example around the heart is the visceral (organ) peri(around)cardial membrane.
We cut this membrane from the body wall and lifted off the wall and looked inside Betty's body cavity and did not see what we expected. This woman had an enlarged heart and the left side of it was so enlarge that the left lung was completely "squeezed" up into the upper left of her chest.
What crossed my mind when I saw this was 'wow!' and then, she must have been hypertensive and suffering from poor circulation. I wouldn't have been surprised if she could not walk up a flight of stairs without stopping for or I should say, gasping for breath.
This organ of romance has four major chambers-which I suspect every high school biology student has learned about-called the atrium and ventricles. These chambers receive blood from the body and then pump it back out either to the lungs or to the body.
The heart has eight major blood vessels to carry the blood about, and between the chambers, the blood vessels, the heart's own blood supply (the cardiac system), the valves between the chambers, this organ receives a lot of scrutiny in life.
For all the ink spilled on the heart, the simple fact is it is simply a pump. Actually two pumps. One moves blood to the lungs for oxygen and the other one to the body.
Because of Betty's health issues, it was her left ventricle (that pumps to the body)that was enlarged-to about the size of a baseball, which is large.
The blood of the heart leaves through the very large aorta as it journey's to the body. The first branch off of this tube are the coronary arteries-the right and the left. These two arteries proceed to circle the heart and they too will provide more branches to reach this important organ's muscles so that oxygen and food reach their destinations.
Descending down between the right and left ventricles is the left anterior descending artery (LAD for short) or known as the widow maker. Any occlusion in this artery will provide instant relief from this world, hence it's moniker.
Far as I know, Betty hadn't suffered a heart attack, but with time she probably would have.
While this is just a muscular pump, that beats about 2.5 billion times a life, we recognize its importance.
I guess the song writers got it right.
