The Weight of a Heart

Winner, Life as a Vet Student and Overall Best Entry
Lea Mehrkens, UC Davis

Today I held a dog’s heart in my hands.

I did not hold a dog’s beating heart. I did not massage said heart back to life. This heart was from a dog who had been dead for five years. By the time I found this heart, it was an old, preserved specimen in a library of macabre, floating organs. It was one jar unceremoniously stacked amongst many. The label read, “Bernese Mountain Dog. 5 years, 2 months. Female.” I winced when I read the word “female”. This dog was a male. He was my dog.

I don’t know why I expected to recognize it right away, why I thought that there would be some reflection or semblance of the dog I loved and grew up with in that heart. There wasn’t. In fact, the only reason I found it was because I recognized my own name on the jar’s label. This was a shock in and of itself; as a first year veterinary student, you really don’t expect to find your name on a jar nestled in the depths of Pathology.

I should also explain that my dog’s heart was in a jar because it was of particular interest to science. He had a congenital disease, pulmonic stenosis. Having undergone a myriad of procedures both at UC Davis and Colorado State University, his heart sported some interesting battle scars. When he died we brought his body back to Davis for necropsy, but I had no idea they had kept this piece of him for teaching.

We took the heart back to Cardiology. I struggled silently during the long walk, vacillating between anxiety and guilty curiosity. I couldn’t shake the idea that there was something morbid and wrong in taking something so sacred, that meant so much to me, in my hands. At the same time, there was so much more I could learn about his disease through seeing the organ with my own eyes. I knew it was an opportunity that I had to take.  I had spent my adolescence deciphering words like “stenosis” and memorizing the path of blood flow through the heart, but had no appreciation for how flawlessly healthy heart valves united, no concept of how thick a hypertrophied muscle feels. Nor could I anticipate that after his heart had been stretched by balloons, cut open, and sewn back together, it would still feel so strong and solid.

I walked out of the teaching hospital with my heart pounding and my mind in a numbing fog.  I said my good-byes and went through the grieving process five years ago, but while holding my dog’s heart today it hit me that he’s been alive in a very real way this whole time. Although this was a very personal experience, it speaks to the uniqueness of this field. We work to preserve and extend animal lives, but even after an animal passes, a life can still have far-reaching impacts, emotional weight, and a real level of permanence. Needless to say, this experience has cemented my desire to pursue a career in veterinary cardiology and has given me a very personal, unique understanding of both the emotional and academic value of a heart.