The following week I did extremely well on my finals. I stayed in town and went looking for another job, because I would need it to earn the money to pay for graduate school. Also, as an out-of-state student, I needed to have a graduate assistantship at the university. Otherwise my tuition would be much higher next term. I had not yet registered for my athletic training classes next term and I pretty much decided that I was not going to pursue that option. I really wanted to do research, which was difficult with Clint giving me no opportunities to pursue that interest. I also still wanted to help people, so I needed to examine my career options. However, no job, full out-of-state tuition and possibly needing to change majors was not a good place to be.

Christmas break was stressful. I was very worried about how I was going to pay for classes next term and also about what classes to sign up for. Training classes were out. I liked the exercise physiology class I had taken, and already had one term of general physiology, so I decided to take the next level of general physiology in the graduate program. I also took some research classes and an advanced chemistry class. Paying for these classes was accomplished by applying for and getting a student loan, working in a local emergency room and draining what little savings I had. I was in a serious negative cash flow due to the out-of-state tuition and lack of a graduate assistant position.

By the end of the term I had found a new graduate assistant position and enrolled in the masters program in biophysics. Well, at least I thought I had. I ended up in the biological sciences program. When registering for different graduate programs at Michigan State, you check the box of the degree program you are in. I must have simply checked the wrong box and found myself in a different program than I had intended. After talking to some people, I discovered that I could change the program I was in, for a fee, and possibly be delayed in graduating, but also could graduate on time and with a master’s degree in biological sciences without changing a thing I was doing. My graduate assistantship was in Family Practice, studying cartilage from people who have arthritis. It would involve doing biophysical and chemical measurements of the cartilage using nuclear magnetic resonance, sometimes called magnetic resonance or NMR, and it required expertise in biophysics. I was doing and learning biophysics, not biological sciences. For example the advanced chemistry I was taking was physical chemistry. However, the people in family practice did not care one way or the other, and so I stayed with the biological sciences program.

I liked the nuclear magnetic resonance project on cartilage. The surgeons would obtain human cartilage from patients at the time of a knee replacement or amputation and give it to us. I would take measurements of the cartilage and the pathologists would look at the disease process that was visible in the cartilage samples. We eventually found that the structuring of water in the diseased cartilage was too tight, thus fluids could not flow in and out of the joint correctly. This is a biophysics problem because the physics of the water had changed as part of the disease. We were not sure if this was a cause or effect of the disease, but it was there in the diseased cartilage. This turned out to be a pretty successful research project with a clear result. With this knowledge, it might now be possible to find ways to improve water structuring in cartilage. I was on my way to helping people.

The director of the nuclear magnetic resonance facility I was using, Dr. Patrick Dillon, was also one of the professors teaching my advanced physiology course. Between having a class with him and working in the lab he ran, I got to know him pretty well. Dr. Dillon was an impressive individual. As a former rugby player he was tall and well built with just a touch of gray in his short black hair.

One day we got to talking about what I would do after finishing my masters and I said I wanted to help people by doing medical research like the stuff we were doing with the cartilage. Dr. Dillon said that his research was on vascular smooth muscle – arteries. After two terms in his classes I of course knew this.

“Did you know that about 43% of all deaths in America are in part due to arteries?” he said.

I was surprised by that statement and said so.

“It is quite true,” he assured me. “Heart attacks, strokes and a lot of kidney disease are the result of the fact that the arteries are not working correctly. Most diabetics who die from the disease die because the diabetes has damaged the arteries. Heart failure is often in part due to the arteries as well.”

I let that all sink in and I could see he was right. The largest single killer of Americans is the American’s arteries and veins. Our blood vessels are the key to our health. I knew this. As an athletic trainer I could get a good idea of the conditioning of an athlete by the vascularity in his or her arms and legs. The big bulging vessels on the arms of a weightlifter or the ankles of a runner always tell me they are fit and healthy. Big healthy vessels mean healthy people.

“Cardiovascular, cerebral vascular, peripheral vascular, pulmonary vascular and renal vascular diseases kill about 1.6 million Americans every year,” he said. “If you want to help people with your research, that is a field that needs research.”

I was hooked. I did some literature searches on Dr. Dillon’s work and on vascular diseases. I talked to Dr. Dillon regularly on the subject and found that my experience in muscle physiology helped me understand arteries too. Arteries are circular muscle formed into a tube. Dr. Dillon had made an important discovery as to how arteries function. He discovered that arteries are very economical when they are working. They can contract without getting too fatigued. This is achieved by what is called “latch bridges” in the artery’s muscle. If your arm muscle could do this, you could hang by your fingers on the edge of a cliff and your arms would not get tired. Arteries are working all the time to maintain blood pressure, so it is good that they do not get tired like arm muscles do. If we could figure out how diseases changed artery function, we might be able to help some of those 1.6 million Americans.