How to Mend a Broken Heart (or Lung)

A carrier pigeon, fancy plumber, electrician, and a team member—that’s how Cindy Herrington—Dr. Cindy to her patients—describes her work as a pediatric cardiac surgeon at the University of Minnesota Children’s Hospital at Fairview. Herrington, forty, performs a majority of the pediatric cardiac surgeries there and is also the surgical director of adult lung transplants.

Interviewing for medical school at seventeen, Herrington entered a BSMD program, and finished both her undergrad and medical schooling in six years. “It gave me the advantage to be a little bit younger when I came out to do my residency, so I haven’t had the same age pressure that other doctors have,” she says.

Herrington has soared in surgery. “I love trauma,” she says. “You get to fix a problem, make a patient better, and see the result. It’s really satisfying.”

She’s equal parts straight shooter and supremely confident—a combination that makes her someone people entrust with their very heartbeat and breath. “It’s very important for everyone to be a part of something that is much bigger than we are. People can very easily get the God complex and think they are the end-all. When I get a call that someone has a heart or a lung, it doesn’t matter if it’s 2:00 in the morning—I’m totally jazzed. But all I really am is the conduit. I’m the one who’s going to take the lungs out and put new lungs in or take a heart out and put a new heart in. I’m just the carrier pigeon in the process.”

Those calls often come at 2:00 a.m., because, as Herrington jokes, the telephones at Lifesource—the organization that matches organs to patients—don’t appear to work during business hours. A medical team is flown to the organ, and if it’s a good match, they bring it back to the patient, who is under anesthesia, on a heart-lung bypass machine, with their original organ removed.

“I’d like to say that it’s really a delicate process, but essentially we cut out the heart with a really big pair of scissors. We bring the new heart in, sew the left atrium to the left atrium, the right atrium to right atrium, the aorta to the aorta, and the pulmonary artery to the pulmonary artery. When we’re done, it looks just like God intended it to be there. Just by warming it up, it begins to beat on its own.”

But despite how simple she makes it sound, the delicate balance between life and death is not lost on her. “To take someone who would die without it and see them get better and get out and live their life—that’s incredible. You realize that there’s got to be a God. Someone passed away for [the organ], so that’s always there, but the grieving family will get some solace knowing they helped eight other people. This other person is going to live life to the fullest and that gift is never wasted. You won’t be able to save every child, but you go into it thinking you will be able to save every child. So considering what I do, my butt better be in church every Sunday.”

Herrington is one of about 120 women in cardiac surgery nationwide—there are about 5,000 men—but she says that regardless of gender, surgeon’s personalities are more similar than different. “We tend to be aggressive, in your face, matter-of-fact. We don’t lack ego strength. We think we’re pretty good, but that’s necessary. If you second-guess yourself, you wouldn’t be able to get up in the morning or take care of your patients as best as you can.”

Her best care includes arriving at the hospital at 6:30 each morning and leaving around 7:30 at night, after she’s “tucked in” her patients, answered hundreds of e-mails, and operated. She stays next to patients’ beds until she’s satisfied, answered all questions doctors or parents have, and handled any emergencies. “You can’t do that over the phone. You gotta vote with your feet. You have to be there,” she says of her omnipresence.

But her seemingly boundless energy and down-to-earth demeanor spring from a deep passion for her work and the desire to see all her patients go home. “At the end of the day, don’t we all want to say that we did something we really enjoyed doing? Isn’t that what this is all about? When people vote for Cindy Herrington, it’s voting for our entire team, because Cindy can’t do diddly without everyone pulling in the same direction. I would not give this up for anything in the world. Anything in the world.”