PHOENIX — Glendale Mayor Jerry Weier continues to recover after a major heart surgery on Thursday after he suffered a heart attack earlier this week.
“My whole life has been trying to serve others. I find myself on the other end of it. Pretty thankful people appreciate me,” said Mayor Weier from his hospital bed at St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center in central Phoenix.
Weier, 63, was rushed to Urgent Care on Monday after days of struggling to breathe. “I was trying to figure out if I was having some of these issues because it was raining, the joint aches. Was it COVID-19 and the problem of breathing? I was finding myself short of breath. Kind of felt like I’d swallowed a tennis ball.”
He underwent quintuple bypass surgery. All five major arteries that supply blood to his heart were diseased.
“When you have a quintuple bypass it’s actually five arteries that were blocked and we need to bypass it to provide an area of the heart with blood circulation that it was lacking,” said Dr. Rachel Bond, Director for the Women's Heart Health Program at Dignity Health.
According to the Center for Disease Control, heart disease is the leading cause of death for men, women and people of many racial and ethnic groups in the United States. Heart attacks can be silent, in fact the CDC founds one in five people experiencing a heart attack never know it.
Weeks before Christmas 65-year-old Dennis Lamb in Tucson collapsed in his backyard after going into cardiac arrest. His life saved by CPR. “I had no warning whatsoever,” said Lamb.
Just a day after surgery Mayor Weiers now back on his feet. He's thankful for his wife and medical team and ready to get back to work.
“They already have me up, walking down the hallway today. It took a beating out of me but I know if I listen to them, I’ll be able to get back to work quicker.”