A MAN AFTER HIS OWN HEART

The mystique of the human heart and its role as the brain’s emotional and psychological counterbalance.

Poet, essayist, and memoirist Siebert (Angus, 2000, etc.) has been preoccupied by this subject for much of his life. A classmate dropped dead of a heart attack in the third grade, and the extremely religious Siebert, who had accidentally taken communion with a full stomach at a Friday mass dedicated to the adoration of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, was convinced this divine punishment had been meant for him. The author’s father had a poorly understood disease of the heart muscle later identified as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), a condition often linked to a genetic mutation, which caused his death in 1980. Siebert himself at age 23 experienced dizziness, shortness of breath, and a rapid heartbeat, the onset of what he calls “my cardiac Dark Ages.” Hearing about a National Institutes of Health study of families with HCM, he tracked down the researchers, learned more about the disease, visited an HCM family participating in the study, and then opted not to find out whether he carried the mutant gene. These events, his experiences researching the heart, and his description of the public dissections performed at the University of Padua in the 16th century are deftly woven into an account of a heart transplant Siebert observed in 1998. The doctor in charge permitted the writer to accompany the medical team as they removed the heart of a brain-dead woman in Newark, packed it in a picnic cooler, and carried it to New York City’s Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. To his surprise, Siebert was allowed to watch as surgeons removed a patient’s diseased heart and replaced it with the healthy one. To his even greater surprise, he found his right hand touching the beating heart in the patient’s open chest, an unforgettable and moving moment.

Adroit blend of personal reflection, science, and history that presents the heart as no mere pump but as the seat of the human soul.