BILLINGS — Wednesday was graduation day for Chris Byers. He completed his final session at the St. Vincent Healthcare cardiac rehab center, with his tech, Lynn, asking every question in the book to make sure he's ready to go, including the most important.
"How's your chest been feeling?"
Good, Byers answered. He knows not to lie to Lynn, after the work she's done to get him to this point.
"The first day I went in there, she said, ‘What do you want to do?’" Byers recalled. "I said, 'I want to go back to work. I want to start playing golf, and I want to work in the yard. She said, ‘I can get you there.'"
She has. Byers, a longtime Billings sportscaster, was back on the anchor desk last week, a pretty remarkable turnaround considering where he was three months ago.
"They said, 'You have two options: you could do nothing and probably be dead in two years,'" he said, "'or you could get surgery.'"
Late last year, Byers, who is in his mid-60s, was diagnosed with aortic stenosis, a disease of the heart valve. He had two treatment choices: the less invasive TAVR procedure in which a catheter is inserted to widen the valve opening, or open heart surgery which Byers wanted no part of - until he met Dr. Simon Maltais.
"Some doctors said, ‘I’m not going to tell you what to do,’" Byers said. "The first thing Dr. Maltais said was, ‘I’ll tell you what to do - get the surgery.’”
Maltais, in his second year in the St. Vincent Healthcare cardiac center, performed a new minimally-invasive open heart procedure, requiring a three-inch incision instead of the customary seven-inch. But during surgery, Maltais found that Byers had a rare condition where fluid was developing in his lungs, so he had to put Byers in a coma-like state and use an extracorporeal membrane oxygenator (ECMO) to help him heal.
"The usual pathway with these patients is to save their life with the device," Maltais said, "and then send them out of state for a higher level of care, to Salt Lake City. But now we feel like we have a team that has come a long way in training to keep them here."
That’s the key to this story. Many studies show a patient who gets to stay close to home will always have a higher rate of recovery, and Maltais was determined to keep Byers in Billings.
"It wasn’t a light decision," he said. "It went all the way to the top and required some political capital."
"For the family, it’s huge," said Chris's wife, Lynn. "I’m a firm believer that (having) family around the loved one helps in the healing process. We could see him and deal with everything hourly, daily."
Lynn said once Maltais told them his plan, she was on board.
"For him to say we can do this," she said, "I had no doubt."
After five days, Byers woke up and Maltais was there to explain everything he’d been through, just one more reason Byers knew he’d found the right man.
"I know the tendency is, ‘I’m going to look everywhere for the No. 1 surgeon I can find, the No. 1 hospital I can find,’" Chris said. "I get it, because I did the same thing. But what’s amazing is what’s in your backyard that you don’t even know about."
