By: centraljersey.com
HILLSBOROUGH – Joan Olszyk knows a thing or two about perseverance. She has lost three family members to Loeys-Dietz Syndrome since 1995, but it hasn’t stopped her from moving ahead.
"She comes to work every day with a smile and we don’t know how she does it," said Erica Neiman, the chief operating officer at Step Ahead, a weight loss center in Bedminster, who works with Ms. Olszyk.
On April 10, Step Ahead will hold its first 5-kilometer run/walk in Bedminster to raise awareness for LDS, in honor of Ms. Olszyk.
Ms. Olszyk, who has lived on Tally Ho Trail in Hillsborough since 1988, lost her husband of 17 years to an aneurysm in 1995. Eugene used to suffer from headaches but the couple never thought it was a medical condition, she said. One day he had blurred vision and high blood pressure. He went to the hospital, and a brain scan revealed abnormal blood vessels, she said. A few days later on May 8 he passed at age 40. No autopsy was done, as the family assumed it was a brain aneurysm.
Ten years later, almost to the day, Ms. Olszyk was out celebrating daughter Chrissy’s birthday with her two sons, Mikey and Jason. Chrissy, who had just graduated from college a year prior and had been married for eight months, was dead the following morning on May 14 at age 27.
"(Ms. Olszyk) is a wonderful nurse, a wonderful person and very compassionate," said Dr. Deborah Neiman, physician and owner of Step Ahead.
"If you didn’t know the tragedies that she’s been through, you wouldn’t know that from working with her or being with her. She doesn’t wear that tragedy on her arm; she is really an extremely uplifting person. She comes to work every day to help others and not have others help her."
Soon after Chrissy’s passing, Ms. Olszyk took her sons to get checked out. The doctors knew the kids had heart problems, and, after Dr. Neiman spoke with a doctor at Johns Hopkins University, Michael and Jason were both diagnosed with LDS, which was discovered in 2005, she said.
Mikey had open-heart surgery in 2006 to correct the disease, but within a week had to go back into the hospital due to a massive infection. The doctors saved him 12 hours into the second surgery but he ended up with a brain entoptic episode, which means he developed disabilities, Ms. Olszyk said.
"Just this past November my son Michael passed away," she said. "When they put his heart back together, there was a hole in (it) they were concerned about and it never closed."
"Jason recently had open-heart surgery and it went well, he’s on a medication that is supposed to stop the progression of Loeys-Dietz," she said.
Loeys-Dietz syndrome is a disease of the blood vessels where there is a weakening of the blood vessel walls and the patients are at a high risk to develop aneurysms that are mostly in their chest or their head, Dr. Neiman said.
About 300-500 individuals worldwide have been diagnosed with Loeys-Dietz Syndrome, according to www.loeysdietz.org.
To learn more about the disease or to get involved with the fun run, visit www.stepaheadnj.com. "It really touched my heart that (Dr. Neiman is) doing it," Ms. Olszyk said of the fun run, which begins at 10 a.m. "We’ve known each other for 27 years and I’ve worked for her for 17."

