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The work of creating this model, including collecting data from CT scans to make the printing instructions followed by 10 hours of a giant printing machine spitting out one tiny layer at a time, involved a collaboration between experts from Alberta Health Services’ Servier Virtual Cardiac Centre, the University of Alberta’s faculty of medicine and dentistry, and the faculty of engineering.

Understanding what’s going on with your body is important to patients, said Brandie Thomas.

“People are more traumatized by things when things are just being done to them, and they have no sense of control, whereas understanding what’s wrong with your body lets you have a say in how they fix it, and then you feel like part of the team, instead of holding you down and doing things to you,” said Thomas.

Beginning when he was three years old, Mason had a series of surgeries, and there was a string of complications.

“We’ve almost lost him a couple of times,” said Thomas. His skin was blue because it wasn’t getting enough oxygen, and he didn’t have energy, she said. After three years on the waiting list, Mason was told he would receive a heart transplant. Thomas said she’s thankful to have Mason because of that donor, but sad for the family that lost their child.

“My heart hurts for them, but I’m grateful that they chose to think of somebody else,” she said.

In the nanoFAB facility on campus, Mason said he liked his new TIE fighter heart “because of the cool wings.”

Always trying to puzzle things out, Mason “has a very inquisitive mind. He really wanted to see his heart,” said Thomas.

He spun around a life-sized plastic model of the small organ and was also able to explain why, in simple terms, he needed a transplant in the first place. He pointed at a small yellow-coloured section of the model representing the left ventricle.

“This part was a little too little, compared to this one,” he said.

lijohnson@postmedia.com

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