providing comfort and support to resume everyday activities and maintain a lifestyle of good health

JANUARY 2018 CIRCULATION OVER 2000

Well, it’s January and we managed to survive 2017. The officers and board of directors hope that you all had a wonderful holiday season and, like us, are looking forward to good things to come in 2018.

Since I didn’t get to do it last month, I’d like to say thank you to Mary Lou Murphy, Jay Caruso and Rosemarie Malvino from

the Offices of Development and Public Affairs. Their sup-port and assistance makes my job as president a lot easier.

The board and Doris Letendre, our trip coordinator, are working on a slate of events and activities to make 2018 an interesting and exciting year. Information about our first event appears in this newsletter. This is one that I am looking forward to.

A couple more housekeeping items; we have BraveHearts pins available for $5 each. If you are interested, contact me at the office (Tuesday mornings) or see me at the gen-eral meeting.

In January, we celebrate the arrival of the Magi in Bethle-hem. We also celebrate the life and achievements of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. We should all take a few minutes and contemplate his accomplishments. You will note that our quote of the month comes from Dr. King. January also marks the start of the serious snow season. PLEASE, every-one be careful both in moving about and in dealing with the snow.

Earlier, I spoke about good things happening. The appear-ance of this issue of the newsletter is one of them. What does everyone think about the newsletter’s updated look? We are continually tweaking it in an effort to produce a modern and attractive product.

We will be offering a CPR training program in February. We offer it every couple of years and it is usually well attended. The business portion of the meeting will be min-imized to allow time for CPR. The February meeting will be held in the DeMatteis Center. Details will be included in your February newsletter.

February also marks the beginning of our dues collection process, you will receive your dues notice in the mail around that time.

This issue profiles LaVonne Brown, a member of the nurs-ing staff at the DeMatteis Center, Cardiac Rehab and our own Dan Siefert offers part 1 of his survivor story.

Mark

A note from the President

Quote of the Month

“The difference between a dreamer and a visionary is that a dreamer has his eyes closed

and a visionary has his eyes open” ~ Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Bravehearts Newsletter

Prayer for the New Year

Loving God, as we begin this New Year, we give you thanks for the gift of life and for our families and friends.

May we see the beauty in each new day. May we act out of our truest values and deepest desires. May we be people of hope and bring encouragement, show good-ness, and have right relationships with all those we en-counter. May this coming year be filled with peace and contentment. May we always trust in you our Loving God. Amen

Courtesy of Sister Pauline Gilmore, FMM

Bravehearts Newsletter Page 2

Join us Wednesday, March 28th

Jesus

At Sight & Sound, PA

Experience the greatest story of all time! Jesus - an action-packed musical stage ad-venture that takes you on a miraculous journey alongside the most famous person ever to walk the earth and the everyday people whose lives he changed forever. While the story of Jesus may be familiar, his actions are unexpected. He befriends outcasts and heals the hurting. He challenges social norms and confronts hypocrisy. He sets sail with fishermen and reasons with religious scholars. And the lives he touches will never be

the same. From the streets of Jerusalem to the raging Sea of Galilee, there’s no place — and no person — that his love can’t reach. Included is a family style lunch with choices such as golden fried chicken, signature pork sausage & Chicken Pot Pie with Homemade Noodles, Real Mashed Potatoes with gravy, Browned Butter Noodles & Chef's Vegetable – and for dessert enjoy Chocolate Cake, Warm Shoo-Fly Pie and Vanilla Ice Cream – Lemonade, Iced Tea, Hot Tea & Coffee. Cost $140 per person includes bus, show, and lunch Bus leaves DeMatteis Center at 8:00am, returning approximately 9:30pm Please send your check for $140 per person along with the names of people going; send to the BraveHearts office. Reservations must be received by February 28

th.

Feel free to call any of these members to talk to someone who has traveled the same road as you.

Heartline

Brooklyn &

Queens

Arthur R. Louise Quintuple Bypass 718-217-1297

Ken Luft Quintuple Bypass 917-627-6768

Vincent Parlato Double Bypass 718-833-8535

Nassau County

Donna Datre Mother of child with Atrial Septal Defect 516-396-0947

Charles Dombroff Triple Bypass 516-766-2636

Geoffrey Fenwick Double Bypass 516-293-2269

Howard Fisher Quadruple Bypass 516-880-8861

Earl Johnson Quadruple Bypass (off pump) 516-742-3263

Alan Karp Quintuple Bypass 516-681-2845

Donna Killough Mother of Child with Double Outlet Right Ventricle 516-674-0661

Carmen Santosus Double Bypass 516-676-8474

Scott Tepper Ross Procedure 516-922-4518 eve

Donald Crocker Quadruple Bypass 631-567-6092

Suffolk County

Susan Eckers Triple Bypass & Angioplasty 631-368-0836

Alfred A. Hulse Quadruple Bypass 631-271-5323

John-Paul LaMothe Aortic Valve Replacement 631-897-2915

Robert Makofsky Aortic Valve Replacement 631-473-0754 eve

Gregory Ogeka Quadruple Bypass 631-878-0897

Kate Weibelt Mother of boy with Narrowed Aortic Valve PDA 631-246-5708

Eleanore L Christie Quadruple Bypass & Aortic Valve Replaced 631-226-1921

Gary Shafonda Quadruple Bypass 631-728-6682

Ulster County Howard Hurst Quadruple Bypass 845-247-8171

Georgia State Frank Stubits Aortic Valve Replacement 516-236-1722

Bravehearts Newsletter Page 3

I was like an ostrich with my head in the sand. My mother, six of her sis-ters and her brother all had coronary issues, as did both their parents. I’m pretty sure my father included cardi-ac problems as a part of his litany of the things terminating his life. I kept on smiling and going my merry way.

After all, I had a rapid metabolism and was a very quick healer. Between

my late 20’s and early 50’s I only gained 20 pounds and grew 1 pants size. I was very active in scouting and enjoyed tons of other outdoor activities. On the down side, I never particularly watched my diet and was a junk food junkie. In the immortal words of Alfred E. Neuman of Mad Magazine “What, Me Wor-ry?”

In the late 90’s, I changed jobs and was working in lower Man-hattan. This required about 2.5 miles of walking daily. That was the upside. The downside was that it was a very high stress situation. I also was traveling to the west coast for one week every month. This naturally lead to less exercise and even worse eating habits. I gained 30 pounds and another pants size. In 2002 I was diagnosed with hypertension told to slow down and started on blood pressure medication. Later that year, I was told my cholesterol levels were way out of whack. And I started on statins.

In the fall of 2003, I changed jobs again, this time to a lower stress situation back on Long Island. Of course this also meant the daily walking disappeared. St. Patrick’s Day 2004, I had lingering heartburn for a couple of days and this time it would not go away despite a copious amount of antacids. I made an appointment to see my GP at noon and advised my employer of this. They responded by asking if I wanted them to take me up the street to the ER at Winthrop (talk about everyone see-ing things you don’t). I told them no thanks as I was on my way to the GP. I get to the GP who examines me and tells me that he is not happy with what he is hearing. He wants me to see someone from Cardiology Consultants right away and the easi-est way to do that was to go to the ER at North Shore in Plainview. I was asked if I wanted transportation there but I declined as it was only a 5-minute ride.

Figuring I might be waiting around the ER for the bulk of the afternoon, I stopped home to change and pick up a crossword book on my way to the hospital. I parked the car, and almost as an afterthought, decided to call my wife to let her know where I was. At the check-in desk, the nurse grabbed me by the arm and said we’ve been waiting for you and led me into the ER. As this is happening she pulls off my jacket opens my shirt and throws me in a chair. The next thing I realize was that I had IV’s in each arm and was surrounded by a doctor, two nurses and my wife. At that point I was loaded into an ambulance, trans-

ported to North Shore in Manhasset where I had 3 stents placed.

I was told that I experienced a heart attack, but there was no damage to the heart. I wasn’t so sure. I went to a six-week re-hab program. My numbers were dropping and all was well (sort of). I found that my thought and decision making process had slowed down and when we went out together my wife was much more comfortable when she drove. Fast forward to late fall 2005 when I went for a stress test. They saw something questionable so I was sent for an angiogram early in 2006.

During the preadmission testing, the nurse practitioner check-ing me expressed concern. She said “I don’t care if you see your GP or your Cardiologist first, but tell them you need a ca-rotid doppler done.” The angiogram did not show any issues in the heart, but I was told I had some clotting issues in my right leg that had to be watched. (That was 2006 and we are still watching).

The carotid doppler was performed and my cardiologists, David Vilikas, MD; advised me that the right carotid had a substantial blockage and he recommend that I take the film and see a vas-cular surgeon. The one he recommended had no open appoint-ment for six weeks. I was then directed to Dr. Peter Patetsios thus starting my odyssey with St. Francis Hospital.

I saw Dr. Patetsios on a Friday. He told me the blockage was about 85% but he didn’t think he had to operate immediately. I told him that wasn’t an option and explained about the “fuzzy” thought process and slowed reaction time. He told me we could do the surgery the following Thursday. He also suggested that I stop by St. Francis on my way home to have the pre-admission testing done. The surgery was performed the follow-ing Thursday, afterward Dr. Patetsios’ commented, “that was a lot worse than it looked on the film.” The recovery from the endarterectomy was worse than the recovery from the heart attack and stents. The mental “fuzziness” was no longer there.

Back to Manhattan in 2007 and now getting all of that exercise again. In early 2008, climbing up the subway stairs I noticed a shortness of breath which took a bit to recover from. I also started to notice some fatigue. After a colonoscopy, to be sure I had no internal bleeding I was diagnosed with anemia and sent to a hematologist. Dr. Joseph Ramek took several blood samples and noticed that I had a large number of immature red blood cells that were being devoured by white blood cells. He then performed a bone marrow biopsy (not fun) and deter-mined that my bone marrow was compromised by long term exposure to the medication I was taking for acid reflux. A medi-cation change for the reflux and mega doses of iron seemed to do the trick. Five years later my red blood count is normal.

Wait for Part 2 to see what happens next!

Dan Siefert—Survivor Story, Part 1

Bravehearts Newsletter Page 4

LaVonne Brown, has been a mainstay at the cardiac rehab for the past 15 years, first as an Exercise Physiologist and for the past year and a half as part of the nursing staff. The fact that she has worked on both sides of the care spectrum make her an excellent candidate to talk about the cardiac rehab pro-gram. LaVonne grew up on Long Island and was both a musician (violin) and athlete (Athlete of the Year in her high school graduating class). She went on to East Carolina University where she was supposed to be on the track team but then she suffered a knee injury. She opted not to have surgery but let the injury heal on its own and decided “it was time to be-come a real student.” She graduated East Carolina with a BS in Nutrition and Dietetics. LaVonne picks up her story here. “Toward the end of my un-dergraduate career, I visited the Human Performance Lab where the students were doing stress testing and body fat analysis. I became intrigued with what I saw. I went to the graduate school at Life University in Marietta, Georgia where I studied Exercise Science. Returning to Long Island I worked at a small gym chain as a personal trainer. I was offered manage-ment positions there, but declined as I felt I had a different calling.” She was searching for a job in the cardiac rehab field when she met a gentleman working in that field at the VA hospital in Northport. He told her that there were no openings for an exercise physiologist at the VA hospital, but that he also worked at St. Francis and that a position was available there. That person turned out to be Michael Manfre, the previous manager of SFH Cardiac Rehab “I enjoyed working as an Exer-

cise Physiologist but still felt I wanted to do something more. I went to nursing school at Suffolk County Community College at night while working during the day. Soon after graduating I became and RN. Much later I graduated from LIU – Post with an MS in Nursing”. “The major difference between working as an RN versus working as an Exercise Physiologist is that the nursing depart-ment concentrates on the more acute patients. Generally this means the patient recently had a cardiac event such as a heart attack, stent, coronary artery surgery, by-pass surgery etc. and requires constant monitoring while exercising. Ex-tensive documentation is required on each patients status which is reported to their physician and our medical staff .” “I’ve been working at the cardiac rehab for over 15 years and still enjoy it. I appreciate how the entire staff, the clinical staff, the doctors and the administrators all work together as a team. What I enjoy the most is the interaction with the pro-gram participants. Most are in the program for three months and then go back to their ’normal’ life. We end up getting attached to our patients and are genuinely sad when they graduate the program. There are others who continue with us on the maintenance program. Many stay for several years and become like family.” “I know that many BraveHearts refer to the family-like envi-ronment of the cardiac rehab. This makes it different from most departments in the hospital and it keeps me happy to come to work each day”

Spotlight on LaVonne Brown, BS, MS, RN, MSN

Left to Right: Nicole Lapin, LaVonne Brown, Joe Reale, Corinne Rey

Bravehearts Newsletter Page 5

The Cardiac Rehabilitation and Fitness programs offered at The DeMatteis Center are growing by leaps and bounds. Program Manager, Dawn Coyle advised us that as of the end of November, over 200 participants were enrolled in the fully monitored Phase ll program. In addition there are over 600 participants in the maintenance program. This equates to 2400 weekly visits to the center. Program Director, Sue Palo tells us that several pieces of new equipment were acquired in 2017 to either replace obsolete devic-es or to supplement the existing equipment stock. Acquired were:

3 - SciFit Upper Body Machines (Hand Cranks) 4 - Lifecore Assault Bikes 3 - Nustep Recumbent Cross Trainers 2 - Cybex Cardio Exercise Bikes.

Our photo selection displays some of the new machines along with our most recent survivor stories being observed by the pro-fessional staff.

Cardiac Rehabilitation – DeMatteis Center

Left Photo (Nicole Lapin & September Survivor - Ken Walker), Center Photo (Corinne Rey & November Survivor - James A. Dan-

iels Sr.) Right Photo ( October Survivor - Mary DiGiovanni, Ann Careccia

Cartoon by: Donald Pitkoff

Do You Remember

Martin & Lewis

Palisades Amusement Park

Idlewild Airport

Arthur Godfrey

Chinese Finger Cuffs

Bravehearts Newsletter

BraveHearts of

St. Francis Hospital

100 Port Washington Blvd

Roslyn, NY 11576 (516) 562 – 6785

Email: BraveHeartsSFH@gmail.com

President — Mark Trantel

Vice-President — Jim Jaffe Vice President — Julia Previto

Secretary — Dan Siefert Treasurer — Emile Letendre

Travel Coordinator — Doris Letendre Editor — Dan Siefert

Co-Editor — Rosemarie Malvino

Newsletter Contributors

Photographer — Jim Jaffe Humorist — Fred Albert

Spiritual Advisor — Sr. Carol Flaherty, FMM

January 21st

Sunday 1:00pm

Lower level Waiting Room in the DeMatteis

Pavilion at SFH – right off parking lot level

New members always welcome!

Refreshments served

after meeting!

Speaker: TBD

Topic:

“The quality, not the longevity, of one’s life is what is important.” ~ Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.