In A Heartbeat

Stephanie Earls: The heart.
It is the body's most vital muscle.
It is a perfect, four-chambered pump, sending blood pulsing, pulsing, pulsing through the lungs, where it is infused with oxygen, then pumping it out to the organs and tissues of the body.
A body can survive without a kidney or a colon or a lung. But not without a heart. If our heartbeat stops, so do we, organ by organ. After one minute, we pass out. Then we seize. For every minute without a heartbeat, our chances of survival drop by 10 percent. At 10 minutes, brain death.
Electrical impulses within the heart control how often it beats. The number of times it beats each minute depends on age, activity level and health.
The heart of an 11-year-old girl beats between 60 and 105 times a minute.
Though the heartbeat feels like a single thump when you press your fingertips to your wrist, it sounds like a spongy lub-dub through a doctor's stethoscope, as electrical impulses open and shut the upper and lower valves.
After the dub, while the heart recharges, is a fraction of a second of silence. At the tail end of that silence, as the heart scrambles to prepare for the next lub, is a fleeting moment of disorder.
Fifteen milliseconds of it, to be exact.

It is the body's most vital muscle.

It is a perfect, four-chambered pump, sending blood pulsing, pulsing, pulsing through the lungs, where it is infused with oxygen, then pumping it out to the organs and tissues of the body.

A body can survive without a kidney or a colon or a lung. But not without a heart. If our heartbeat stops, so do we, organ by organ. After one minute, we pass out. Then we seize. For every minute without a heartbeat, our chances of survival drop by 10 percent. At 10 minutes, brain death.

Electrical impulses within the heart control how often it beats. The number of times it beats each minute depends on age, activity level and health.

The heart of an 11-year-old girl beats between 60 and 105 times a minute.

Though the heartbeat feels like a single thump when you press your fingertips to your wrist, it sounds like a spongy lub-dub through a doctor's stethoscope, as electrical impulses open and shut the upper and lower valves.

After the dub, while the heart recharges, is a fraction of a second of silence. At the tail end of that silence, as the heart scrambles to prepare for the next lub, is a fleeting moment of disorder.

Fifteen milliseconds of it, to be exact.