Lawson home after heart attack

Lawson returns home after heart attack
By Dan Hilborn, Burnaby NOW assistant editor
Published April 16, 21003

Former Burnaby city councillor Doreen Lawson is resting and recuperating at home after spending three weeks in hospital.
"I've very tired and very weak, but aside from that, I'm feeling well," Lawson said last Thursday, just one day after returning home from Burnaby Hospital, where she had suffered a heart attack that was apparently triggered by a change in medication for a blood condition. Lawson, who served on Burnaby city council in several stints over nearly 30 years, first knew something was up during a vacation in Australia last year when she developed a sore on her ankle.
When the sore did not heal, even after her return home, she went to her doctor and discovered it was probably a long-term side effect from a medication she had been taking to combat the condition she had been diagnosed with 24 years previously.
She was told that changing medication would eliminate the sore, but there was also a calculated risk that it might also trigger a heart attack. Lawson decided to take the chance.
Luckily, she knew something was up when, some time after the switch, she began to experience shortness of breath. Lawson admitted herself to Burnaby Hospital before the heart attack struck with full force.
Always active, Lawson is now taking life at a decidedly slower pace. She is taking a break from the many art courses she's been attending at both the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design and in local community centres.
Last November, she was presented with the Queen's Golden Jubilee medal at a ceremony with Senator Gerry St. Germaine.
Nationally, Lawson is best known as the first woman to be elected president of the Canadian Federation of Municipalities, and she is a former federal Liberal party candidate and national executive member. Closer to home she is known as the lady of Burnaby Lake - the local politician who fought hardest to preserve the lake for wildlife and nature.