2005 Archive

Nancy's Story: A pioneering prairie girl

Nancy Smith in her Camrose home.

A large scrapbook in Nancy Smith's Camrose home contains every card she received during her long stay at Edmonton's University of Alberta Hospital in 1958. The front of the book is stuffed with cheery 'get well' cards. Turning the last pages, you find Valentines.

"I was what they called a 'blue baby'," the gracious senior recalls. "I was born with two holes in my heart and a heart murmur."

Hailing from a farm in the Strome District, Nancy enjoyed a relatively normal childhood despite her cardiac problems, helping out with chores alongside her siblings. After she graduated from high school, she took a job at the Co-op in Killam.

"I was feeling more and more tired and getting weaker," she says. "In the summer of 1957, I saw the doctors in Killam who figured out what was happening."

As Nancy's health deteriorated, her physicians contacted Dr. John C. Callaghan, the cardiac surgeon in Edmonton. The doctors believed Nancy would likely die without aggressive treatment. When Dr. Callaghan suggested that she undergo open-heart surgery, 19-year old Nancy agreed despite the risks of the new procedure.

"Back then, young people only had surgery for their tonsils or appendix," chuckles Nancy. "I don't remember being afraid, even though Dr. Callaghan told me there was a 30% chance of survival. I thought it was the only way I'd recover."

She recalls looking out the window of her home across the snow-covered fields on Christmas Day, wondering if she would see another holiday.

January 15, 1958, Nancy became one of Alberta's first open-heart surgery recipients. "They had to pack me on ice," she explains, meaning that Dr. Callaghan and surgeon Dr. Robert Frazier induced hypothermia in her, cooling her blood to prevent damage to her brain and circulatory system as they worked.  A massive heart-lung machine took over for Nancy's heart during part of the surgery. Five hours later, the doctors had successfully patched up Nancy's heart.

That evening, she was hemorrhaging. The cardiac team had to open Nancy up again to save her life. The tiny woman went through 44 pints of donated blood before the problem was brought under control.

It was a long recovery. "I remember getting out of bed the first time and my legs didn't work," she laughs.

Gradually, Nancy regained her strength. She stayed with an aunt in Edmonton for several weeks after leaving the hospital so she could follow up with her cardiac team. That June, she went back to work at the Co-op. By the fall, she was acting her age at social dances.

"I felt so much better," she says. "It was a miracle. I had the surgery and never looked back." A couple years later, Nancy was married and expecting her first child.

Nancy saw Dr. Callaghan one more time. In the mid-70s, she bumped into him when she was visiting a friend in the cardiac ward of the University Hospital. "Of course he wanted to check my heart out and have a listen," Nancy says. "Everything sounded fine."

Although Nancy's surgery was groundbreaking in 1958, by the time she and Dr. Callaghan met again, it was commonplace, saving or improving hundreds of lives a year. Capital Health's University of Alberta Hospital cardiac team had significantly refined open-heart surgery techniques to make the procedure safer, faster and more effective.

Today, patients from across Alberta and the Canadian North come to Edmonton for heart surgery – and for very complex surgery such as heart transplants, they come from across Western Canada.  Edmonton now does the most heart transplants in Canada and achieves survival rates for patients, that draw attention from across the country.

The Mazanakowski Alberta Heart Institute will provide more operating rooms, treatment rooms and a state of the art hospital environment to continue these advances and ensure all patients can access heart care treatment when they need it.