President Nelson’s impact in medical field is still felt as he celebrates 100th birthday
Sep 9, 2024, 12:38 PM | Updated: 1:01 pm
President Russell M. Nelson greets young people outside the Tegucigalpa Honduras Temple in 2018. (Courtesy of the Central America Area)
(Courtesy of the Central America Area)
SALT LAKE CITY — As President Russell M. Nelson celebrates his 100th birthday Monday, education has been an important part of his life.
His learning started at a young age, and the influence of his education in medicine is still felt today.
“He’s so smart. I mean, he skipped two grades as a child. And he, you know, was in medical school by age 17,” President Nelson’s daughter Sylvia Webster said.
President Russell M. Nelson of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints looks at birthday cards sent to him for his 99th birthday in his office at the Church Administration Building in Salt Lake City, Utah, on Friday, September 8, 2023. (Intellectual Reserve)
‘I was so young’
President Nelson graduated from medical school at the University of Utah at the age of 22, and was first in his class.
“When I entered medical school, and I saw how well the body was made and how well it functions, I was enamored with God’s great creation, the magnificence of the human body,” President Nelson said.
When he graduated from medical school in 1947, operating on a live heart had never been done. In fact, it wasn’t even considered an option. While earning a Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota, he was part of a team that developed the first heart-lung machine.
“I was so young I didn’t know it couldn’t be done,” President Nelson said.
Their machine would finally make open heart surgery a possibility.
‘I’ve always been curious’
Sheri Dew, vice president of Deseret Management Corp and biographer said, “I said to him one day, ‘How do you go from being told you can’t touch the heart to saying, hey let’s build a heart-lung machine?’ He said, ‘Oh, I’ve always been curious.’”
That natural curiosity led to a tremendous legacy. President Nelson gained a reputation as one of the premier heart surgeons in the country, receiving patients from all over the world.
His desire to learn and research has helped the generations of his own family.
“When I finished my training, he pulled me aside, and he gave me a briefcase and said, ‘Here, to start your training, your career on your own.’” President Nelson’s grandson Dr. Stephen McKellar said. “He said, ‘If I could relive some of those highlights just by giving you a bag, I would.’”
McKellar is a cardiac surgeon at the University of Utah following in his grandfather’s footsteps, specializing in heart transplants and artificial hearts.
“To hear what they did in the 50s, it still boggles my mind. When I go to the operating room, success is almost assured. When they went to the operating room, that was not the case,” McKellar said.
Competition with illnesses
Nelson’s team would attend surgical and medical conventions to brainstorm ideas.
“As they would go to surgical and medical conventions, this small group of open heart surgeons would talk, and they would share information,” Dew said. “‘This worked and that didn’t work. Have you thought of this? I tried this and that seemed to work. Or, I tried that and it didn’t work.’”
President Nelson said he wasn’t in competition with others in the medical field. His main focus was helping relief human suffering. Our competition wasn’t with each other,” he said. “Our competition was with the disease, death, and ignorance. Of course, we helped each other. We wanted to save lives.”
According to Dew, President Nelson performed roughly 7,000 operations throughout his career, with most of his patients surviving.
Attendees sign a giant birthday card for President Russell M. Nelson’s upcoming 100th birthday during the 2024 Utah Area Young Single Adult Conference held at the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City on Saturday, Aug. 3, 2024. (Isaac Hale, Deseret News)
Not always a success
His operations weren’t always successful, however, and President Nelson struggled emotionally at times. In later years, he shared the stories of his patients with members of the Church.
“This third heartbreaking loss in one family literally undid me. I went home grief-stricken. I threw myself upon our living room floor and cried all night long,” President Nelson said.
His years of scientific study brought President Nelson closer to the Lord.
“I realized that my own heart beats night and day and I’m not plugging it into any source of power but with the gift from our Heavenly Father. It’s just amazing how he could give us a pump that could pump the equivalent of 2,000 gallons of fluid a day without any evidence of any external power. But there are electrical signals even emitting from the brain. So are our creative thoughts of everything. And it’s so beautiful.”
Called to serve
At the height of his surgical career, President Nelson was called to serve as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in 1984.
A year later, he was asked to fly to China to perform a risky operation on an opera star. That was the last surgery he ever performed.
“He’s driven by his faith. We talked about the Lord is a great physician. This (President Nelson) is a great physician,” said Henry B. Eyring, Second Counselor to President Nelson.
