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Koppels help open new rehab center at St. Mary's Hospital
Donation partially funds facility for pulmonary, cardiac patients
Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2010
 Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photo by REID SILVERMAN
Former ABC news anchor Ted Koppel, right, and his wife, Grace Anne Dorney Koppel, embrace after cutting the ribbon on St. Mary's Hospital's new pulmonary and cardiac rehabilitation center.
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St. Mary's Hospital in Leonardtown opened a new pulmonary and cardiac rehabilitation center on Friday with the help of a veteran television newsman and his wife.
Ted Koppel, former anchor of ABC's "Nightline" and commentator for National Public Radio and BBC America, and his wife, Grace Anne Dorney Koppel, cut the ribbon on the new center as a packed atrium of hospital staff and guests cheered.
"Last year, Ted Koppel approached the hospital with the idea of opening the center in his wife's name," said Joan Gelrud, the hospital's vice president.
Grace Anne Dorney Koppel is a national advocate for the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute's COPD Learn More Breathe Better Campaign, which raises awareness about chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. She was diagnosed with the disease in 2001 and gave the dedication speech Friday, relating her battle to catch her breath.
"I was looking at the face of death seven years ago," Koppel said in an interview following her speech. "Even when I was standing still, I could not catch my breath."
Koppel said she stopped smoking two decades ago, but was diagnosed with COPD in 2001. She said she was told to prepare to die within five years. But with the help of rehabilitative exercise, she said, she was able to increase her lung capacity from 26 percent then to 60 percent today.
She said that, while the disease is incurable, it is manageable.
"The disease is like a binding, ever-tightening chain," Koppel told the audience at the opening ceremony. She said the rehabilitation program now being offered at the hospital is "not just a 12-week program, it's a commitment to change your life … I got my life back."
According to the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, about one-fifth of smokers develop COPD. It estimates that 25 to 45 percent of the 24 million Americans with COPD have never smoked.
Koppel said that she and her husband hope to open more rehabilitation centers in rural areas of the nation in the coming years. The Koppels own a home in St. Inigoes, so they decided to start nearby.
"Rehabilitation should be available outside of the big cities," she said. "St. Mary's County is Ted's and my second home."
Ted Koppel donated a share of the startup costs of the center as a birthday present to his wife, but he declined Friday to say how much he contributed.
"Let me ask you a question," Koppel said. "The last time you gave your wife a surprise birthday gift, did you tell her what it cost?"
Gelrud said that the new Grace Anne Dorney Pulmonary and Cardiac Rehabilitation Center cost about half a million dollars to open, but Koppel clarified that his gift did not cover that entire amount.
He credited his wife with providing the true dynamism behind the project. "She's the one who does all the hard work," Koppel said.
After the ceremony, Jennifer Collings Drury, a clinical exercise specialist, took visitors on a tour of the new center, which she said was once the hospital's sleep studies laboratory. Drury pointed out the new set of cardiovascular workout equipment and demonstrated the center's wireless heart monitors.
The heart monitors are the key part of the center. They send real-time information to the center's computers, allowing instructors to monitor patients during their workouts to ensure that patients are working hard enough to expand heart and lung capacity without overtaxing themselves.
The hospital plans to begin treating patients at the center this week.
