When Everyday Activities Became Exhausting: Lee’s Journey Back to Strength

Lee Sonnier of Lafayette, Louisiana, and his wife, Missy, always enjoy their trips to the beach, but during their 2024 trip, Lee noticed that pulling the beach wagon left him more tired than usual. Lee recalled, “I’d stop, check the wagon, make sure everything was okay, but really, I was stopping to take a break.”

When they returned to the beach in 2025, Lee was pulling the wagon with his bike, just four blocks from the beach, when he again found himself stopping several times. This time, he was experiencing a burning sensation in his chest and feeling completely worn out. Lee admitted, “Deep down inside, I knew I wasn’t fine. I knew I was just too scared to say something.”

After his annual evaluation with Dr. Fernando Ruiz, interventional cardiologist at Cardiovascular Institute of the South (CIS) in Lafayette, Lee was scheduled for an angiogram. Dr. Ruiz discovered a 90% blockage in the widowmaker, along with 80% and 70% blockages in other arteries. As Dr. Ruiz was delivering the news to Lee’s wife and sister, Lee suddenly began experiencing chest pain. He stayed in the hospital through the weekend before undergoing bypass surgery and a valve replacement that Monday.

After surgery, Lee was referred to our Intensive Cardiac Rehab Center in Lafayette to regain his strength and rebuild his confidence. When he first started, he could barely move his arms and was very protective of his chest after everything his body had been through. He was “scared to death” to begin rehab, remembering how difficult everyday activities had become before surgery. Even cutting the grass would leave him exhausted.

On his first day, Lee started with a stationary bike and completed three miles, surprising himself with what he was able to accomplish. Over the next 12 weeks, he attended rehab three days a week, gradually progressing from cardio to strength training while learning how to safely push his body. Heather Quirk, exercise physiologist and cardiac rehab coordinator, monitored his progress and helped him build confidence week after week.

But cardiac rehab became more than exercise for Lee. The program also taught him about nutrition and stress management. He worked with our intensive cardiac rehab dietitian, Noelle Comeaux, to learn what foods to avoid and how to read nutrition labels, learned stress-management techniques, and worked with cardiac rehab nutrition coach Daisy Kerne to prepare heart-healthy meals.

Looking back, Lee says it took the entire team – the coaches, teachers, dietitians, and staff – to help him get where he is today and motivate him to continue pushing himself. At the end of his 12 weeks, Heather told Lee she wished she could have filmed him walking into the program on his first day compared with how he looked and what he was doing on his last day.

Today, Lee still keeps up with his exercise routine at the ICR, where graduates of our program can return and exercise for free. He has built a routine he looks forward to and returned to doing things he once struggled to do. He is now planning trips and looking forward to what comes next.

At our Intensive Cardiac Rehab Center in Lafayette, we’re proud to help patients regain their health, confidence, and quality of life after a cardiac event through personalized exercise, nutrition education, stress management, ongoing support, and a community that continues long after the program ends. Learn more about our Intensive Cardiac Rehab program here.