Lana Swartzlander of Chicora will mark the 50th anniversary of her open heart surgery next month. She had the surgery at the age of 16 to repair a life-threatening defect she had since birth.

CHICORA — Happily married for 45 years, with three children and six grandchildren, Lana Swartzlander feels lucky to be alive.

On Aug. 5, she'll celebrate the 50th anniversary of her open heart surgery.

Swartzlander had a major birth defect: a hole in one of the chambers of her heart. She basically lived a normal life like many of her peers, even riding bicycles to school with her sister.

However, from fifth or sixth grade, she went through numerous tests at the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh; tests that indicated she probably would not have lived with the defect past the age of 21.

So at 16, the summer before her junior year at what was then Fairview Township Karns City High School, she went under the knife.

Swartzlander said she wasn't too scared of the procedure at the time, but her parents later told her there was a 50/50 chance she could have died on the operating table. Many who had survived surgery then only lived a few more years

“Back then, I was naive. I didn't know. At 16, you have no fear,” she said at her Chicora home.

She spent two weeks in the hospital, and was home schooled for the first month of her junior year in high school. She eventually made a full recovery.

She realizes now the surgical team at Presbyterian-University Hospital, now UPMC Presbyterian, saved her life. Dr. Henry Bahnson, who died in 2003, was one of the first doctors to perform open heart surgery in Pittsburgh.

According to his obituary, in 1968 he was also the first doctor to perform a heart transplant in Pennsylvania.

Swartzlander even went as far as to write a letter to his daughter, a Pittsburgh attorney, thanking her for the work her father did.

According to the Franklin Institute, the first successful open heart surgery was performed in 1952, about a decade before Swartzlander's procedure.

Aesthetics were important to the doctor, too. Bahnson made the incision under her breast, “So I could wear a bikini,” she said.

“No one could even see the scar. He was a man ahead of his time,” she added.

Her father, Joe Jackson, paid back the favor to the hospital for decades. As a woodworker, he made toys by hand to raffle off at Christmas time. All the money he raised he donated to the hospital.

Next month, Swartzlander won't be having a big celebration, but she will be spending time with a sister who's coming into town from New Jersey.

And after many years, having raised three children and now retired, she said she's fortunate and blessed to live each day.

“Every year goes by,” she said, “And you go, 'Wow!'”