No obvious risk factors?
 Don’t forget about your family history...
“I’ve always been tall and thin and not a bit overweight,” says Newport Resident Larry Blair. “And I’m active and have tried to eat well, for the most
part. I think I’ve lived a pretty healthy lifestyle.”
But, Blair, who celebrated his 60th birthday earlier this year, is also celebrating his recovery from four blocked arteries that required quadruple bypass surgery. While Blair
lacked many of the obvious risk factors such as obesity, a sedentary lifestyle and poor eating habits, he had one major factor working against him: heredity.
“High cholesterol runs in my family,” says Blair. “My father died because of heart disease and my sister had heart surgery a few years back. I knew I was at
risk.”
So on August 4, 2005, when Blair went to see his primary care physician, Dr. Richard North, at the Samaritan Waldport Clinic, he was only moderately stunned to learn his heart was
in danger.
“Dr. North was concerned enough to prescribe nitro and help me set up an appointment for an angiogram in Corvallis as soon as possible,” says Blair. “So that next
week, I headed to Good Samaritan where the angiogram showed I had a major blockage in four arteries. Dr. Jeffrey Watkins, the cardiologist who saw me, strongly recommended that I
immediately have surgery. So without even a trip back to the beach, Dr. Mark Taylor performed the bypass procedure the very next day.”
According to Dr. Taylor, a triple-board certified cardiothoracic surgeon, Blair was fortunate his primary care physician recognized his condition and sent him for treatment before
he had a major heart attack.
“Larry had a CABG (Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting, pronounced “cabbage”) to unblock his arteries and allow his heart to receive adequate oxygen and
nutrients,” says Taylor. “If he would have continued to function with the severe blockage, the strain on his heart soon would have been enough to cause a heart
attack.”
So after spending three days recovering at Good Sam, Blair returned to Newport to begin his own recovery.
“I realized the stress of my job was unhealthy and so I decided not to return,” says Blair. “I also joined the Cardiac Rehab program at the Newport hospital
(Samaritan Pacific Communities Hospital) and made a commitment to exercise.”
As part of the rehab program, Blair completed 12 weeks of supervised exercise and emotional support and education.
“They took good care of me over there,” says Blair of the therapists who worked with him at SPCH. “They monitor you very closely and they helped me to become
confident that I was exercising properly. Now I am exercising on a regular basis on my own.”
In addition to exercising and eating right, Blair now takes statins to keep his cholesterol low. And while he knows heredity is something he can’t change, he knows that
living a healthy lifestyle will keep his heart going for the long run.
Dr. Taylor agrees.
“It’s so important that people who have a family history of heart disease stay vigilant about maintaining a healthy lifestyle,” says Taylor. “There are also
some very helpful medicines to combat cholesterol that can make a real difference in the fight against heart problems.”
It’s now been more than a year since Blair’s health scare, and today he looks back with gratitude for the care he received.
“Had Dr. North not diagnosed my problem, and sent me to Corvallis for the angiogram, where they discovered the blockage, I would have had a heart attack and probably
died,” says Blair. “As it turned out, I did not have the ‘big one’. The coordinated efforts of Dr. North and the team at Samaritan saved my life, I now feel
great, people tell me I look great. Thanks to the good folks at Samaritan, I am looking forward to many more years.”
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