We talk to eminent Heart surgeon Prof Stephen Westaby ahead of his Chorleywood event this month
At the age of just seven Stephen Westaby made a decision about his life
“ I was a backstreet boy from Scunthorpe when I watched doctors doing cardiac surgery on a BBC TV programme Your Life in their Hands. I just knew then I wanted to be a heart surgeon.”
When his grandfather died in front of him from a heart attack Westaby became all the more determined.
“I was single minded. I worked at the steelworks, as a hospital porter, watched autopsies and eventually got into medical school at London’s Old Charing Cross Hospital in 1966.”
Whilst a student there he sneaks into a no-go gallery over an operating theatre and looks down at operations. Just one of many times he breaks rules to achieve his goal. Westaby’s drive is relentless, he takes risks, pushes boundaries and has an insatiable thirst for knowledge, sometimes achieving the ‘impossible’ and always doing the ultimate for patients, whatever it takes. He finds a way of talking to or working with every heart specialist he rates, on once occasion flying to Texas and waiting overnight to meet Dr Denton Coulis who had implanted a completely artificial heart, on another offering to work with engineer Robert Jarvik, who invented the first successful permanent artificial heart.
“Pivotal moments” says Westaby..
“I was completely undisciplined but you needed to be that way to push cardiac surgery forward”
Westaby has carried out 11,000 heart operations, pioneered the development of miniaturised artificial hearts (now a transplant alternative) as well as developing a British pump, and has the world’s longest survivor with any type of artificial heart.
His book Fragile Lives pulls together his life experiences. The story telling is pacey and the language evocative- you are in theatre with him, you get to know medics and patients, feel joy at recoveries, devastation at losses and understand the utter frustration of battling the NHS system. He details incredible cases from a pulseless man to a baby suffering multiple heart attacks who is at the brink of death ( she is now 18!)
In 2004, Westaby received a phonecall from the BBC…would he take part in a series of medical documentaries first aired in 1958? The series title was to be Your Life in their Hands.
In conversation with Professor Stephen Westaby, Thurs 16 Feb, 7.30pm, The Junction, Christ Church, WD3 5SG. Tickets £8, book £10 on night (RRP £14.99) Chorleywood Bookshop. Expect bites from the book, Fragile Lives – a heart surgeon’s stories of life and death on the operating table, video clips of Westaby at work and possibly some examples of devices