BOWLING GREEN, Ohio — Doctors say there are a number of risk factors that can attack your heart. These include heredity factors, elevated cholesterol and a history of smoking.
In fact, some of those things can land you on an operating table, and that's exactly what happened to someone you know very well.
He wants his story to serve as a call to action for those of you who think you might have nothing to fear. But before we get today, we need to go back in time a bit.
It was back in 2017 when the Ad Council released a commercial depicting a woman climbing over a mountain of cigarettes. Those cigarettes were supposed to be the ones she had smoked over her lifetime. The ad urged people to get their lungs checked out.
That ad was a wake-up call for former WTOL-11 TV news anchor Jerry Anderson.
Jerry recalls seeing that ad, saying, "I said, 'there's this commercial on TV - with this lady and she climbing up a mountain on all fours, and you look at it and it's a mountain of cigarette butts' - and let's face it - back in the early days, we all had bad habits."
As a result of seeing that ad, Jerry says he went to his doctor, got the test, and his lungs were fine. But after a second look years later, he says it showed some cardiac artery calcification.
In other words, there was a build-up in his arteries, and that was limiting blood flow to the heart.
According to the CDC, heart disease is the number one killer of Americans. Jerry says more tests were needed, even while normal life continued.
"I did [basketball] games [at Bowling Green State University] after my cath (Cardiac Catheterization), where I knew I was blocked," says Anderson. "You still wanted to be excited - 'THREE-POINTER!!!' - so I didn't want to go, in a whisper, 'Uh, three-pointer, just playing it safe people.'"
ProMedica Cardiologist Dr. Amil Karamali says they're seeing more instances where these initial lung scans show much more.
"As more and more people are getting these studies done, we're actually seeing a lot of these folks because of calcification that they note on their coronary circulation during the lung CAT (computerized axial tomography) scan," says Karamali.
Jerry Anderson says that's what they saw on his test. But he says it was a serious blockage, so much so that open-heart surgery was his best option, and both he and his wife knew it.
"I knew what he was out there telling her," Anderson says when recalling the doctor telling his wife what the situation was. "She comes back, and pulls open the curtain, and looked at me, and I - not to be a wimp - I just started crying."
On March 4, Jerry Anderson went under the knife for his open-heart surgery.
Today, Jerry's retirement is marching to a new beat, as he takes part in morning physical therapy sessions at Wood County Hospital.
He says he realizes he was fortunate because he had no severe symptoms, there was no pain, and there was no heart attack as he lives a very active lifestyle.
"I would probably be out running around Bowling Green as I do: I have little courses, sidewalk courses, around neighborhoods in BG, or on the treadmill in my basement - I got lucky," Jerry said.
Karamali says medically speaking, lucky is exactly right.
"He had a 34% risk of an adverse cardiac event in the next ten years - that's a lot. That's a lot," says Karamali.
But the doctor says Jerry's attention to his health was a key factor in early detection, and Jerry wants others to do the same.
Doctors can't stress enough the importance of getting regular checkups, because if you think this only affects men, you're wrong.
According to the CDC, heart disease is the leading cause of mortality for black and while females, accounting for one in five deaths nationwide.
For this former TV anchor, life in retirement threw him an adlib. Jerry has more therapy to come, but he says he thankful it'll get him back to his beloved Stroh Center announcing BGSU basketball games in the fall.