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Almost from the moment he set foot in Humana Hospital on Nov. 8 to meet DeVries and Lansing, there was no question about what Schroeder wanted. He made a tape of the meeting and played it for his family the next day. "We just kind of sat down and asked, 'Dad, what do you want to do?' " recalled Margaret Schroeder.
"He said, 'I have no other thought. I want to go all the way.' " Schroeder's family and his clergyman supported his decision. Said his brother Paul:
"He had the choice between life and death, and he chose life."
As a man in the final stages of terminal heart disease, Schroeder met the main criterion for receiving an artificial heart. In addition, the patient-selection committee at Humana was impressed with what Lansing called his "pure, smalltown, mid-America background" and strong family support. They were worried, however, about Schroeder's secondary health problems. In recent months his diabetes, once controlled by diet, had become more serious and required daily injections of insulin. Doctors at Humana believed the problem was related to infections in six of his teeth and in his gallbladder, which was inflamed by the presence of gallstones. Before the implant could be approved, these sources of infection had to be removed. The teeth were pulled and, just eight days before the implant, Schroeder, despite his fragile heart, underwent surgery to remove the gallstones. His need for insulin promptly declined, and the hospital gave the go-ahead for the artificial heart.
Schroeder and his family were made well aware of the risks of the procedure in a 17-page consent form spelling out in detail everything that could go wrong. The document had been expanded since the days of Barney Clark to include the medical problems that Clark had suffered, including brain seizures and serious depression. The last was included because Clark had complained to psychiatrists that he wanted to die, that his "mind was shot" and that he found it enormously disappointing to wake up and find that he was still alive with the artificial heart pounding away in his chest. DeVries revealed last week that before Clark's surgery, a group of doctors had actually tried to talk their patient out of the operation as a means of testing his will. "We didn't do that this time," said DeVries. But doctors did describe the risks to Schroeder in what DeVries termed "very graphic language such as 'becoming a vegetable.' " Schroeder, like Clark before him, remained devoutly willing. "I trust you," he told DeVries just before surgery. Nonetheless, he was prepared to die and received the last rites of the Roman Catholic Church from a home-town priest the night before the implant operation.