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Perhaps the most forbiddingly difficult of DeBakey's aneurysm cases involved a man of 38 with a dissecting aneurysm that began in the chest cavity above the diaphragm and had not only grown in width but had also extended downward through the diaphragm, making a wide split where there is normally a tight fit. Worse still, the splitting of the arterial walls extended into parts of four branch arteries—the two renals, supplying both kidneys; the mesenteric, supplying much of the intestines; and the celiac, supplying the stomach, liver and spleen. Using a graft with six connections, Dr. DeBakey replaced the entire assemblage of arterial piping.
Triple-Play Team. Surgeon DeBakey performs such intricate operations so; often that he seems to be supplied with inexhaustible energy. His 20-hour day begins before dawn, when he tackles the paper work in his den at home. His first chore at the hospital starts at 7 a.m., when he checks three adjoining operating rooms to make sure they have all been set up in accordance with orders worked out with his two chief assistants, surgeons Dr. H. Edward Garrett, 38, and Dr. Jimmy Frank Howell, 32. A typical day's schedule reads:
ROOM 3
Mrs. A.B.—mitral commissurotomy, with pump stand-by
Mr. C.D.—right carotid endarterectomy
Mr. E.F.—left carotid endarterectomy
ROOM 4
Mrs. G.H.—aortic valve replacement, with pump
Miss I.J.—mitral valve replacement, with pump
Mr. K.L.—right carotid endarterectomy
ROOM 5
Mr. M.N.—aneurysm of abdominal aorta
Mr. O.P.—right femoral-popliteal bypass; right lumbar sympathectomy
Mr. Q.R.—renal artery bypass
Surgery begins at 7:30, and in what the Houston virtuosos have come to regard as routine cases, operations may get under way in the three rooms at once, with Drs. DeBakey, Garrett and Howell each taking charge in one. If a case is expected to be of more than average difficulty, DeBakey will have Garrett or Howell as his chief assistant, facing him across the operating table.
Though DeBakey cannot do the entire operations in all the cases he schedules daily, he usually does the major part of three or four and somehow arranges the timing so that he is on hand at the most crucial stage of all the others. In his office he keeps an administrative assistant and three secretaries frantically busy. Except for business occasions, he allows no time for lunch; he keeps going by nibbling snacks in the office and punctuating the day with coffee.
The incredible drive for perfection, the unending concern for his patients, the utter domination of his life by his profession, have won Michael Ellis DeBakey the nickname of "the Texas Tornado." The TV scriptwriter who created such a character would sooner or later conjure up flashbacks to a boyhood in the family drugstore and an early love for medicine. In DeBakey's case, his life outdoes such fiction.