With a scalpel, the surgeon makes a small nick in what looks like a mound of fat but what is actually a coronary artery. A trickle of dark blood bubbles out. Then, picking up a needle, he begins to sew what was once a leg vein onto the heart, suturing the entire circumference of the graft without ever cutting the thread.
"It's amazing how small the stitches they sew are," Taylor says, pinching together her thumb and index finger nails and squinting to see the minuscule space between them.
Students from a summer school program watch surgery at Inova Fairfax Hospital's "Dome."
(Photograph by Chris Hartlove)
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"How do you not shake?" a student asks.
Taylor smiles. "If you do that, you shouldn't be a surgeon. There's a natural weeding-out process."
With one end of the bypass attached, the surgeon takes a scalpel with a round blade, punches a tiny hole into the aorta and attaches the other end of the graft. The patient now has one of three bypasses, one that should last him 15 years, if he eats properly, gets exercise and doesn't smoke.
While the surgeon sews the next graft, Taylor asks for the students' attention. "We like to talk about things you can do so this won't happen to you."
She pulls out a set of test tubes filled with a Crisco-like substance, each representing the amount of fat in various brands of junk food. The tubes are labeled with names such as Snickers, Big Mac, potato chips. She holds up a tube packed almost to the top. "This is how much fat you get with one piece of thin crust pizza from Pizza Hut."
Kevin Telleria, a skinny kid with a ponytail from Wakefield, arches his eyebrows in disbelief, though what he's just learned doesn't change his mind about wanting to go out for pizza with his classmates after they leave the Dome. Others question those plans, and little discussions break out around the room about whether they should stick with pizza.
Scott Tsuchitani, a Yorktown soccer player who plans to study physical therapy in college, pushes his baseball cap back on his head. "This is why I'm gonna die," he declares. "I ate 20 pieces of pizza yesterday."
Taylor's son had a similar reaction after his class came to the Dome. "I just ruined my son's life when his class came here, and I showed them the pizza tube. He stopped eating pizza for about a week."
Taylor hands out a fact sheet listing the fat content in fast foods. Christian Ficara, a Yorktown soccer player, pores over the sheet and ticks off a list of his favorites. "I eat that and that and that and that," he says, rubbing his unshaven cheek, astounded by what's in a Whopper, a Big Mac, Chicken McNuggets and a Quarter Pounder. "I'm definitely resorting to Subway after this. Less fat. Less calories. It's like half of anything on this."
Taylor knows that these students are likely to eat fast food no matter what she says. But if they're aware of what's in the food and of the impact that it can have, perhaps they'll eat a little less. The American Heart Association suggests that people with normal cholesterol levels should eat no more that 67 grams of fat per day. But if you eat a Big Mac and large fries, and wash it down with a shake, you've just ingested the entire recommended daily allowance in one sitting.
Next Taylor hauls out her "fat suit," a cotton vest with 25 pounds of mushy yellow rubber sewn to the midsection. She asks for volunteers to try it on. Wendy Reyes slips her lithe arms through the sleeves. Taylor instructs her to sit down and then to stand up. She stumbles as she rises from the chair, clutching the imitation belly. "I probably wouldn't be able to walk if I gained this much weight," she says, hurriedly shedding the vest.
Reyes has seen how serious obesity can become. A friend of hers in his early twenties recently died from obesity-related heart complications. "He couldn't walk around that much. His legs couldn't support his weight, so he stayed in bed all the time and ate. His attitude was, 'I'm 400 pounds. There's no point to stop eating.' "
