Fitness Training Made My Heart Strong

Dear Brian,

When I began training at your gym in May little did I think that less than a year later, I would be diagnosed with immediate grade infiltrating lobular carcinoma…breast cancer. I had a bilateral mastectomy and removal of all lymph nodes on the affected side. Cancer was present in two of the nodes and was also found in the surrounding tissue.

During the course of additional diagnostic testing for metastases, I was injected with nuclear medicine for a bone scan and a left ventricle ejection and left ventricular wall motion test among many other tests. After a couple of frightening days waiting to hear, the doctor reported that all test results were favorable. With regard to the heart test, he said, “You have the heart of a 16-year-old. I wish I were so fortunate.” Since I was 60 years old, I thought he must be joking.”

“Your left ventricular ejection fraction is 64% – as good as a teenager and better than anyone I ever see in your age group,” he explained. I was confused and said that number didn’t sound so good to me. It wasn’t as if it were in the 80 or 90 percentiles. He said that the “normal LV ejection fraction is 50% and that 64% was very high in this test.” He said that he “saw young adults all the time with a fraction below 50%.”

Although I had taken your training the previous year, and had not maintained any gym activity for the immediate past six months, we concluded that it must have been the fitness training that made my heart so strong. What a blessing it turned out to be. By entering the surgery and chemotherapy in good health, I also recovered far better than average. After three surgeries and a year of drug treatment, I believe that I am completely healed now.

My oncologist held me up as a star patient and even featured me in a documentary film about the hospital treatment center. Thank you for your help and encouragement in improving my health and my chances for recovering from a dreadful disease.

Sincerely,

Lucy