Their Story – Jamie Criss
The second in a series of TBE employee health success stories.

By John E. Eberhart

Long before Teledyne Brown had its own fitness center and its many amenities, it had Jamie Criss, RN.  Since then, she has remained an integral part in the development of TBE’s Wellness Program, in addition to being a constant example of the benefits that exercise and healthy living provide.

It Does A Body Good

Jamie has been a nurse at TBE for over 25 years, and in that time she has become a prominent figurehead in our health-conscious atmosphere.  When she became part of the TBE family in 1983, the Company was in the initial stages of implementing their wellness program.  Jamie’s athletic background (she began swimming at age 10 and was on the swim and dive team in high school), in addition to her nursing qualifications, made her an excellent candidate to help jump-start this program, and she was immediately utilized.  Soon, Jamie was teaching aerobics classes four nights a week in the TBE cafeteria.  This marked the beginning of TBE’s first fitness classes, and Jamie has been teaching exercise classes here ever since.

While most of you are more familiar with Jamie as TBE’s head nurse and fitness enthusiast, she has been a great many more things in her life.  A former tennis player, biology teacher, surgical technician, and cancer researcher, Jamie is also a cancer survivor.

Pretty in Pink

In 1989, Jamie went to her first cancer awareness meeting at TBE.  She went not really expecting to learn anything she didn’t already know.  She had never had a mammogram.  At the meeting, they had a hands-on display using breast-implant-like gels that showed what to look for during self-testing and demonstrated the difficulty in finding cancerous lumps.  While working out one day, not long after the meeting, Jamie happened to notice an eerily familiar mass in one of her breasts.  Wisely, Jamie scheduled a mammogram, and while she was eventually diagnosed with breast cancer, she was fortunate enough to have caught it early.

Jamie continued teaching aerobics classes until she began chemotherapy, and despite the effects of the treatment, she remained vigilant and upbeat.  She asked herself, “What can I do to make myself feel good again?”  So, during her recovery period, she began working out around the house.  Easy, gentle exercises at first, gradually increasing in duration and difficulty.  “It made me feel normal again,” she says.  While it is hard to say she has cancer to thank, her refusal to become sedentary led her to include weight training to her exercise regimen.

“If You Want To See Results You Have to Be Consistent and Challenge Yourself”

Although Jamie says she has experienced everything with exercising, including “dreading it and hating it,” she likes it more now than ever:  “As I’ve gotten older, I’ve appreciated what exercise has done for me.”  To further herself, Jamie hired Whitnye Lolley two years ago as her personal trainer.  She says she “needed the extra push” and feels that she is in better shape now than she ever has been.  The motivation is easy for Jamie.  She feels better, stronger, and in the end, what better impetus is there than that?