Lee Curtes, Hartford, WI – 54 at time of event (2000)
Lee would find it hard to choose a better place to die. He was 12,000 feet up on top of Belle’s Camp with his skis on, looking at Vail’s Blue Sky Basin. Luckily, Lee gets to repeat the visit every year, and meet with the people who saved his life.
On January 14th, 2000, Lee found the view literally breathless, and then got so hot under the collar he started stripping off. He had the classic symptoms of a heart attack. His wife Melodee and her friend immediately called over the Ski Patrol. Kevin Latchford was on the scene instantly, with an AED strapped to his back. The last thing Lee remembers is seeing the clear blue sky above him. He passed out despite the oxygen mask over his face. The AED announced that it was a shockable rhythm, so they “pushed the button” on the little blue box to bring him back.
They shot down the mountain in a helicopter and Lee was in the Vail Valley Medical Center ER when he arrested again. Tests reveled he had a clot in his LAD artery, and a special drug called tPA* was administered to dissolve the clot. He also received PTCA or balloon angioplasty to ensure adequate blood flow until he could be airlifted to Denver for another special treatment called angiojet thrombolytic therapy—basically a tiny vacuum cleaner for arteries. He also has a stent to hold open this critical artery on the front of his heart.
The cause of all this trouble may well have been his high cholesterol and family history of heart disease. So these days Lee takes life easy, and watches what he eats, plus he exercises every day. The snow features mightily in Lee’s activities. He goes cross-country skiing, and snowshoes around his property in Wisconsin. And every year he’s back on that mountain for some downhill with his lifesavers.
Vail Associates had opened Blue Sky only a week before Lee’s arrest, and he was their first save. It was especially fortuitous that management had seen fit to equip the mountain with AEDs. They have had three more saves since. He knows this because each year he celebrates his anniversary in the ski patrol hut with Kevin and Mark, and that year’s rookies. He is able to explain to them, first hand, the value of these lifesaving devices, and the critical role they played.
Lee also has an AED at home, one in each office and takes one with him most places he goes. He knows that, “…it was the AED, coupled with good fortune and God’s blessing. That’s the only reason I’m here.”
“Without a defibrillator, not one stroke of luck, highly technical person, or sophisticated piece of machinery would have been able to save me.
*Tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) is a thrombolytic agent (clot-busting drug) approved by the FDA in 1987 for heart attack and stroke victims.
-Jeremy Whitehead