ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, June 24, 1996 TAG: 9606240089
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
HEART SURGERY PATIENTS and their families celebrated the fifth anniversary of Lewis-Gale's heart center.
A year ago, Larry Curfiss was trim and active, taking karate classes with his sons. Last June, they went on a canoe trip as part of an annual father-son outing. Curfiss, then 45, thought he was in good health, except for minor cholesterol and blood pressure problems.
But two months later, he stepped out of the shower and fainted. Tests showed three blocked heart arteries. He had a bypass operation at Lewis-Gale Regional Heart Center in Salem.
The staff at Lewis-Gale had him up and exercising even before he left the hospital. At first, Curfiss had trouble walking one-tenth of a mile. He could barely walk one loop around his house.
But with the help of the physical therapy program at Lewis-Gale, he has steadily come back. Now he runs two miles a day.
And next weekend - just 10 months after open-heart surgery - Curfiss and his sons will once again head out on their yearly father-son outing. They're going rock-climbing, then they're going to take part in a wilderness paint-ball war.
"The good news is I can do whatever I want to do - I don't have any restrictions," he said.
Curfiss was one of more than 200 former heart patients - along with about 200 family members - who showed up Sunday to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the creation of Lewis-Gale's heart-surgery center.
Since 1991, more than 1,100 patients have had open-heart surgery there. It is one of just two heart-surgery programs in Southwest Virginia. The other, at Roanoke Memorial Hospital, was founded in 1982.
Dr. Kevin Ducey, who does heart surgeries at both hospitals, said the Roanoke Valley has become a major hub for speciality medicine in the past decade or so. He said the hospitals' survival rates for heart surgeries - usually defined as living more than 30 days after the operation - stacks up "very well" with the national average, which is around 97 to 99 percent.
State Sen. Madison Marye, a Montgomery County farmer, is one of Lewis-Gale's success stories.
On a cold December morning in 1992, Marye, who had just turned 67, was helping his wife clean out a stall for a sick cow. His hands got cold. "I felt bad." He went into the house to get a Coca-Cola. But he started feeling worse. He called 911.
It was a heart attack.
They got his coveralls off before they put him in the ambulance, but Marye was worried about his long underwear. "I didn't think it was appropriate for a state senator to show up at the hospital wearing long johns," he joked to the audience at Sunday's reunion. "How they got them off, I don't know - I guess I was out of the picture by then."
It was the first time Marye had been in the hospital since he had his tonsils out.
After his bypass surgery, "I knew I was in trouble when I woke up, and here was my whole family assembled there. I thought things were real grim." He started giving his son instructions about funeral arrangements.
He said the staff at the heart center "saved my life."
"I've been in some pretty tight places over the course of my life," Marye said. "But I think this last one was just about a sure thing - and they pulled me through."
He said the heart center is important to Southwest Virginia's economy. It's a "top-notch" program, he said, that can hold its own with any comparable facility anywhere in the nation.
The center's patients typically are in their 60s, but it has had patients in their 30s on up into their late 80s.
Larry Curfiss said that at first, he had a hard time dealing with the fact that he was so much younger than the typical heart patient. But he learned "to live with it and go on."
One of the heart center's tasks is to deal with heart patients' natural fears.
"It's still hard for me to appreciate that a doctor can go in there and sew those little sutures, and you're not going to bleed to death," Curfiss said.
The center also tries to soothe the worries of patients' families. Before the operation, staffers took Curfiss' wife Cinda and their sons, then 14, 17 and 20, on a tour of the critical care unit.
"They were good about talking about what to expect," Cinda Curfiss said. "They're very concerned about families - especially the kids."
Since the operation, the family has encouraged Larry's need to eat right and exercise regularly. When Cinda broils steaks for the boys, she broils fish for Larry.
"They still eat all the cookies and the junk food," he said. "I don't eat that stuff."
"There is life after a bypass," Cinda said. "Of course, the wife has some gray hairs from worrying."
Larry Curfiss is back at work as a vice president at ITT Corp. He knows, with his hereditary tendency to heart disease, that he may have to have surgery again someday. But he is doing all he can to avoid that and is confident he can live an active life.
``The hard part, my boys and wife still think I'm not 100 percent. `You sure you should be doing that?' `Yes, I'm fine.'''
LENGTH: Medium: 100 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ERIC BRADY/Staff. 1. Dancing to the music of the Stylistby CNBQuintet are C.R. Scott of Vinton, a 1991 heart bypass patient, and
Florence Mather of Salem, a heart bypass patient in 1992. The two
met at the reunion Sunday. color. 2. (headshot) Sen. Madison Marye.