44-year-old Terry Curry is having the varicose vein in her right leg sealed shut using a catheter and radiofrequency heat -- all in just two minutes.

"The patients have less post-operative pain with the radiofrequency energy than they do with the laser energy because the temperature is so much higher with the laser energy," says Foote Hospital vascular surgeon Dr. Max Hutton.

He says in the past, using a laser or going through major surgery to strip a varicose vein were the only two options. But now there's a procedure called ClosureFAST that helps treat the diseased veins caused by venous insufficiency. It's a condition where the valve of the vein weakens and rather than blood going to the heart it rushes down the leg.

"With prolonged venous insufficiency patients can actually have damage to the tissues in their lower legs around the ankles and the lower legs in the ankles can actually get large ulcers."

"It would burn and sting at the sight of the varicose vein itself," Curry explains. "But then it would pull all the way up and into the groin. It made me start thinking there was a blood clot there."

Curry first noticed a varicose vein in her left leg twenty years ago. Sometime later she developed another in her right.

"I also have 23 steps to my front door. So anytime I'd carry things, groceries even, it would feel like my legs were tree stumps by the time I got to the top of the stairs, just because of the blood pulling."

She had the vein in her left leg treated a couple of months before her right. And she says she's now looking forward to life without pain and without the unattractive veins that caused her so many problems for so long.