by Cary Shimek

Nilanjan “Neil” Chatterjee’s grand adventure of moving to America to earn a master’s degree in business administration took a wrong turn a year ago.

On that day, while on the phone ordering car insurance, Chatterjee suddenly realized he was slurring his words and breathing heavily. The UM student from India felt himself salivating, and an alarming numbness spread in his left arm. He knew something had gone very wrong.

After sitting down and trying to sort through what had hit him, Chatterjee made his way to UM’s Curry Health Center, where health workers promptly routed him to Missoula’s St. Patrick Hospital.

Prognosis: Chatterjee — only 36 years old — had survived a temporary stroke in which a blood clot went to his brain. Though there had been no permanent damage, his heart was faulty, and other more catastrophic events would likely follow.
Chatterjee took the news hard. A charismatic native of Patna, India, he had traveled the world for years as an international businessman marketing pharmaceuticals, learning seven languages in the process and marrying his Russian sweetheart, Olessia. He eventually decided to formalize his education by uprooting his family, which now included 3-year-old daughter Liza, and attending a university in the U.S. hinterlands.

“An American friend in Moscow said to go to a place like Montana to have fun and spend time with your family,” he says. “I think no one looks at where you went to school five years after you have graduated. It’s your performance. The price also was right, since I am fighting a 45-to-1 exchange rate. But I was taking a risk coming to this place, all this distance, investing all our savings, and what if it doesn’t work?”

If Chatterjee’s health problems forced him from school, it would be a devastating blow to his family’s plans for success. So he was astounded when hospital personnel told him he could have major open-heart surgery here in Missoula with no disruption to his education.

St. Patrick Hospital is home to the International Heart Institute, a joint venture between the hospital and UM that brings together an internationally recognized team of cardiologists, heart surgeons and researchers who perform the most advanced cardiac procedures while searching for new and improved ways to treat heart disease. And it happened to be located in the Rocky Mountain community where Chatterjee had gambled his future.

Chatterjee finished his spring 2000 semester with no other episodes and went under the knife May 19.

“I was never too worried about the issue of mortality,” he says. “I was worried whether I would have a good quality of life afterwards and still be able to go to school. I also worried that I had no family here, with a daughter and a wife who didn’t speak English.”

His surgeon, Stephen Tahta, says Chatterjee was born with an atrial septal defect — a 1- to 2-centimeter hole in the wall that separates the upper two chambers of the heart. Tahta patched this hole using part of the tissue sack that surrounds the heart.

Tahta says the heart hole had overloaded the right side of Chatterjee’s heart with too much blood, and over the years this caused his tricuspid valve to start leaking. Tahta fixed the defective valve with a Duran Ring, a flexible circle of synthetic polymer with an outer layer of cloth that is actually sewn into the heart tissue. The ring brings the valve leaflets closer together so the heart can work properly. The device was developed by Dr. Carlos Duran, the renowned heart surgeon who founded the International Heart Institute in 1995.

Chatterjee also volunteered to participate in an institute study of heart blood flow that took place during the surgery. “It let me participate in something that can help other patients in the future,” he says.

The graduate student was amazed by the results. He left the hospital in five days, carrying a red St. Patrick Hospital “heart pillow” wherever he went. (Holding the pillow close helped support his tender chest when he coughed and laughed. It also would have padded him if he fell and warned people that this was someone to be careful around.) Chatterjee was exercising days after the surgery — climbing Mount Sentinel to the M — and, best of all, his studies weren’t delayed.

He was attending UM summer school just over a month after having his heart repaired. These days he says he feels much better than before his surgery. He was helped by the fact that the hospital picked up the tab for his deductible and co-payment. All in all, his family’s American adventure is back on track.

“They have a world-class hospital here in Missoula — you don’t have to worry about your health or your family’s health,” he says.