American Heart Month: An Instructor With First-Hand Experience
Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010
Back in October of 1996, LucyAnn Doino had every reason to feel a bit tired—she’d just delivered a healthy baby boy. But in the days after the birth, LucyAnn’s fatigue was accompanied by dull annoying pain in her upper back. “I just didn’t feel right,” she says. She called her ob-gyn, who sent her to the emergency room and then—a week after her symptoms began—she underwent emergency open-heart surgery at Valhalla Medical Center. LucyAnn had a blood clot and a torn artery; blood had been leaking from her heart for seven days.
“I was lucky,” says LucyAnn, who is a Pilates and yoga instructor at APOGEE White Plains. Not only did the initial tear, caused by a ballooning of the blood vessel called an aneurysm, not kill her but she was aware enough to know that something was wrong.
LucyAnn began taking yoga classes as part of her healing process two years after her surgery. “I had rounded shoulders because I was protecting my chest,” she says. LucyAnn continued, adding weight training to her routine and then Pilates. Now, 13 years after her surgery, LucyAnn has changed in many ways: She has lost 35 pounds and found a career. She teaches 13 Pilates classes a week at APOGEE White Plains.
After instructing her students on the Pilates mats, LucyAnn often brings up information about heart disease. “I see women, especially, put their health last,” she says. She lets the women in her classes know that heart attacks don’t always include the classic pain in the chest or left arm. “It can be dull pain in the upper back, like I had,” LucyAnn says, “or dizziness or heaviness in the chest. If you’re not feeling right, have your doctor check it out.” Her students believe her: After all, she’s living proof.
Join our celebration of American Heart Month! On Friday, February 5, National Wear Red Day, wear red to classes at APOGEE White Plains and Bedford Hills to show your support for research into and awareness of heart disease and stroke.
