By request: Why doctors helped this veteran keep a special tattoo

Louis B. Smith Jr. served in the Army for 21 years. But Smith faced one of his most life-threatening moments off the battlefield and at home in Country Club Hills.

At 63, Smith was diagnosed with cardiac amyloidosis, which causes heart failure. Around Thanksgiving last year, he was given priority status on the heart transplant list.

Two weeks later, the transplant surgery was good to go. However, Smith had a request to his surgeon before the procedure. “Can you do me a favor?” Smith asked. “When you cut me, can you try to save the tattoo on my chest?”

It was a request Smith’s cardiac surgeon, Dr. Benjamin Bryner, at Northwestern Medicine’s Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute was happy to follow — especially since Smith was so good at following doctors’ requests.

“He was up for any kind of challenge we said he was going to need to do and up for any audacious…