Nearly 50 years ago, Bettie Wendt of Spotsylvania County survived experimental heart surgery. She has since raised a family and is expecting her sixth grandchild. MIKE MORONES/THE FREE LANCE-STAR Visit the Photo Place

View the Spotsylvania County community page

borrowed TIME Pioneering surgery saved her life

Forty-nine years ago, she gambled on a pioneering surgery to save her life

Date published: 10/15/2006

By ELIZABETH KRIETSCH

On Aug. 14, 1957, 14-year-old Bettie Southworth entered the operating room for a highly experimental medical procedure.

Doctors said the operation had a 50 percent chance of killing her, but she was willing to take the risk because it was her best hope of living a full life.

Her sister, Sandy Pates of Spotsylvania County, remembers saying goodbye to Bettie before the surgery.

"I remember being fearful because I didn't know if I would ever see her again," Pates said.

Once in the operating room, Bettie was given an anesthetic and immersed in a large tub of ice and water, to drop her temperature to 82 degrees.

Surgeons then worked quickly to sew up a half-dollar-size hole in her heart.

The risky surgery took just six minutes, and when the anesthesia wore off, Bettie was alive.

The world of open-heart surgery has drastically changed in the decades since, with improvement of the heart-lung bypass machine and other medical innovations. But at the time, this was a pioneering surgical procedure.

It was so new that the surgery wasn't even available when her heart problem was first detected.

Bettie--who grew up, got married and became Bettie Wendt--was 2 years old when her doctor noticed that the whites in her eyes didn't look right. The doctor suggested she undergo tests, and an examination revealed a heart murmur. That marked the beginning of numerous doctor visits.

Later tests revealed a congenital heart problem called atrial septal defect, meaning she had a hole between the upper two chambers of her heart.

"During my younger years, I went back and forth to the doctors, running tests and such," Wendt said. "But there really wasn't much they could do."

Open-heart surgery didn't exist when she was diagnosed, so there was no treatment available for her then. Her condition, and the lack of options, placed a large amount of stress not only on her, but on her family and doctors.

She recalls being hospitalized on numerous occasions for minor injuries and illnesses because doctors weren't sure how her heart would cope.

"They often put me in the hospital to make sure nothing went wrong," she said.

Follow us on

Read more stories about Fredericksburg
Date published: 10/15/2006