Photograph by Matthew Tennison
Ten years ago, Bill Weik was boarding an airplane every Monday morning for work and returning home on Friday. By Sunday afternoon, he was packing to leave again the next day.
Life was stressful, but he was focused and successful.
At home in Virginia Beach, he had a loving wife, a precious daughter and a black Lab to take for walks along the oceanfront. It was a good life.
On a business trip to Puerto Rico, everything changed. At first, Bill thought the pain was indigestion. After all, he was only 37. Then it got a whole lot worse. He called Melissa, his wife.
Melissa Weik, an administrator with Orthopedic Associates of Lancaster, is a registered nurse who has worked in critical care. “I couldn’t see him, but from his symptoms, I knew what was happening,” she says. Her young husband, the father of her 8-year-old daughter, was having a heart attack.
Bill, chief executive officer of Orthopedic Associates, was in horrible pain, lying in a locked hotel room, unable to move.
Melissa, knowing the grave danger, called for paramedics and told them to break into the room to get to Bill. They did. Bill was taken to the nearest hospital, where he was given clot-busting drugs and stabilized.
Major Lifestyle Changes
Melissa arrived the next day and had Bill transferred to a cardiac care facility, where they learned that Bill had blockages in his main artery and right coronary artery. A week later, Bill had an angioplasty and a stent inserted into one of his arteries.
When the Weiks returned from Puerto Rico, they made major changes in their lifestyle.
Having grown up in Lebanon County, Bill and Melissa were raised on a traditional meat-and-potatoes type of diet. And although Bill’s father and grandfather both died of heart attacks, Bill says he didn’t think about it much.
“I figured I had plenty of time to take care of myself later,” says Bill.
After being “scared straight,” as Melissa put it, they traded things like corned beef hash, ham, gravy and butter for steamed vegetables, brown rice, ahi tuna, salmon and meat with very little fat. They reduced the processed foods in their diets and added more fresh foods.
Bills says he was afraid to eat anything. He cut carbohydrates, including his favorite: chocolate. Cheese and butter: gone. Even his doctor thought he was being too strict. He ate only 20 grams of fat a day.
According to the American Heart Association’s healthy diet guidelines, a person who needs 2,000 calories each day should consume a total of 50-70 grams fat.
The couple began an exercise regimen. Bill lost 50 pounds.
They have continued with their lifestyle changes, and Bill says he is healthier now at 47 than he was at 37. In addition to eating healthier foods, Bill and Melissa exercise three to five days a week, depending on their schedules, either at home with a trainer or at Universal Athletic Club.
Bill’s heart attack not only had a trickle-down effect, says Melissa, as she and their daughter revised their eating habits, but a trickle-up effect. After the Weiks moved back to the Lancaster area, their families adopted some of the same healthful eating habits, such as eating more fish.
Finding Balance
Now, Bill describes his life as much more balanced. “Once you figure out the balance, everything else comes into place,” he says.
Since Bill’s heart attack, the Weiks have come a long way from what Melissa referred to as their “hectic parallel lives’’ prior to the health crisis. They both agree that their life is better now.
Melissa credits the Heart Association with educating health-care providers about the changes that people can make even if they have genetic risk factors. Bill’s cardiologist urged the Weiks to “change the things you can change,” says Melissa.
And they did.
“You can prevent the genetic [aspect] of a family having high cholesterol if you make dietary changes early in life,” says Melissa.
Bill and Melissa show their appreciation of the American Heart Association by working on the Lancaster Heart Ball. They began attending the Heart Ball in the mid-90s and volunteering with the Heart Association in 2005. In 2009, they were co-chairs of the ball. And their employer, Orthopedic Associates, is a sponsor of the 2012 Heart Ball to be held February 4 at Lancaster Country Club (www.heart.org/lancasterpaheartball.com).
Melissa applauds the Heart Association’s grassroots approach to helping people learn how to “change the things you can change,” she says.
That’s how the Weiks turned their lives from hectic to balanced and healthy.
