Engineering
Portland Magazine
January 24, 2020
TWENTY-TWO-YEAR-OLD Steve Johnson can hear his heart beat. “Tick” might be the more accurate word. In a quiet room other people can hear it tick too, and the sound has sent his fellow classmates looking for the source, looking for the clock they can’t find. But there is no clock. Not exactly.
The sound comes from the opening and closing of his new grade On-X heart valve, which he received through open heart surgery on October 28. On his right hand he wears a ring made of the same lightweight, unscratchable, and uncrushable material as the valve in his heart. Turns out his ring finger’s diameter is only one millimeter smaller than the diameter of his aortic valve.
Steve received his bachelor’s in mechanical engineering at UP in 2019 and then went straight into UP’s master’s program in biomedical engineering. So he describes his heart valve with the fascination of an engineer whose life’s work involves studying materials and heat and the process of making things work.
After heat treating the pyrolytic carbon, it turns into a material so tough “a car could run over it,” and he describes with wonder the invention of a “material your body can grow with… which is nuts.”
Steve got the heart surgery in October. He was born with congenital heart disease called aortic stenosis. Before the surgery he couldn’t lift more than 40 pounds and had limits on how much he could exercise. In June, after an episode of chest pain that wouldn’t go away, a hospital stay, and many, many tests, he learned his heart valve was collapsing when his heart rate increased. Surgery was his best option.
If we go back four years, Steve’s heart is the reason he came to University of Portland in the first place.
University of Portland was the first on his list of college tours. He knew he wanted to pursue engineering, but somehow he missed UP’s connection to Donald P. Shiley until he came for the tour and everything added up for him. He knew about Donald Shiley and the advances he made in the heart valve field, and by the end of the tour, Steve knew he wanted to go to the same school as the pioneer. He didn’t tour another school.
To be clear, the valve in Steve’s heart is not a Shiley valve, but that’s because the technology has continued to advance. “Without the Shiley valve and the progress that came from him, my life would be totally different,” Steve says.
He is still recovering from surgery in some ways. He has experienced some depression because of the many life changes he’s had to accept post-surgery. He is nervous about being behind the wheel of a car. He sometimes has trouble sleeping because of the ticking of his heart. And sometimes the sound makes him anxious. It makes him think of a clock. It makes him think he has somewhere to go, something to do, somewhere to be. And if you have a keen awareness of the way your heart is working, that invites all kinds of ideas about it not working. “It’s kind of scary to be honest.”
“At first I felt sorry for myself. But then I realized everyone’s got something.” Going through these experiences has motivated him to share his story with others.
But he is adjusting, and it has been important to him that he keeps up his schoolwork and graduates on time with his cohort in May. He says they’ve been a great support. In his backpack, he always carries the cards loaded with heart puns that his classmates sent him in the hospital.
In January, Darlene Shiley came to University of Portland to meet with students and to celebrate her late husband Donald P. Shiley. Steve waited in line for a chance to speak with her. He told her his story. He showed her his heart valve ring. She asked him to write down his story and send it to her, and he said he would. Meeting her meant a lot to him. “I owe my life to them,” he says.
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