My Cows

I found this old picture of me and some co-workers! It really makes me miss this job.

I worked for a company called World Heart. We did development of and LVAD (left ventricular assist device) I was a calf sitter. I babysat baby cows! They would implant the pump into a calf that was about 6 months old. I would help with the surgery, monitor the cow after surgery and collect data until the study was complete. Since I love the smell of burning flesh, the vet taught me how to open the cow's chest. Yes I know how to surgically access a cow's heart.

This particular cow in the picture was the second cow that I ever named, chops. The first cow I named, Norman, died on the table. Chops was a special cow, I taught him how to walk on the treadmill. Before he had surgery I went there everyday to get him used to walking on the treadmill so after surgery we could get special data while he walked. He got so close to me that I could whistle at him and he would come to me. On one occasion the treadmill broke. Matt, the kid in the black hat, was trying to fix it with at very loud tool. Meanwhile I was standing in front of Chops. The noise startled Chops and he reared up on me. His front legs went over my shoulders along with all of his weight, about 350 pounds. I pushed him back and off of me, but hurt my back pretty bad. The engineer, the guy without a hat, said he got some pretty interesting numbers when Chops did that. Before he jumped on me, I vowed that I would be involved in putting him down because I was very close to him. After the attack, however, he turned out to be the only cow that I ever injected with potasium chloride and stopped his heart.

Our cows were kind of like big dogs. They had so much personality! George was my all time favorite cow. We had him for 4 months. He was huge. Baby cows gain 3-5 pounds a day. George would get so excited whenever someone would come into the barn. If you didn't go pet him when you got there, he would moo until you did. He reacted differently with different people. One day a mean lady came in to do an inspection. She went up to him to pet him and he backed away. I thought it was funny that he knew how horrible she was.

World Heart got FDA approval for our pump, so there wasn't any need for the cows anymore. I sure do miss getting paid to hang out with these guys.