Local legislator recovering from stroke, heart attacks

Bryon Glathar, Herald Managing Editor
Posted 3/25/19

Piiparinen survives heart attacks, stroke

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Local legislator recovering from stroke, heart attacks

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EVANSTON — The last week of the 2019 Wyoming Legislative Session — actually even days before that — four-term legislator Garry Piiparinen was having trouble breathing. The shortness of breath continued, but Piiparinen stayed in Cheyenne to finish out the session.

Although the session’s 35-day calendar instructed legislators to adjourn by midnight on Wednesday, Feb. 27, Piiparinen and his colleagues worked until 2 a.m. that night. 

“I’d asked another representative if he could carry my bags out,” Piiparinen told the Herald last week. “I’d carry them about 100 feet and have to stop to take a breath. I asked him if he could go get my car, too, because it was too far.”

He got up around 9:30 the next morning and some people helped him pack up before he headed home to Evanston.

“I drove back five hours to Evanston,” he said. “I stopped at Long John Silver’s to bring some food back for my family.”

They ate dinner, watched a Utah Jazz game, followed by a movie. Then he told his wife, Shelley, that he was going to go see a doctor the next day.

“I’m one, like most men, who doesn’t like going to the doctor,” he said. But Shelley could see he was agitated and having trouble breathing.

“My wife said, ‘Let’s go to the ER.’ So I drove over there, signed myself in,” he said. “As soon as I came in, they did an EKG and there was activity there … that showed I’d either had a heart attack or was having a heart attack.”

Medical staff at Evanston Regional Hospital figured that Piiparinen suffered a heart attack earlier that week, too, about three days before the legislative session was over.

He said ERH officials wanted to LifeFlight him to a Utah hospital, but there was a snowstorm that night, so medics transported him via ambulance. They gave him the choice of Ogden or Salt Lake City, and he chose St. Mark’s Hospital in Salt Lake City because he has family near there.

Once at St. Mark’s, someone approached him with a tablet for him to sign in.

“I couldn’t sign my name,” he said. He’d had a stroke during the ambulance ride and the right side of his body wasn’t working properly. 

He went in for surgery, and said doctors put a stint in his “widow maker artery,” the left anterior descending (LAD) artery. The LAD is the main artery that goes down the front of the heart.

“Next thing you know,” Piiparinen said, “I was in the ICU for six days.”

He lost 30 pounds, and spent the next two days in the CPU (chest pain unit) before moving to a regular room for a couple of weeks. He’d made a lot of progress before he was discharged on Wednesday, March 20, spending a lot of time doing intensive therapy.

“ After all this happened,” he said, “I couldn’t move much of my right side, my fingers, my arm, especially my upper arm. Now you wouldn’t know I have a problem if we were just shaking hands.”

He said he’s received an outpouring of support, whether it’s been legislators visiting, phone calls from friends and loved ones (even Gov. Mark Gordon called to check up on him), letters, cards, prayers or messages on Facebook.

He talks to siblings daily, along with friends John Holderegger, a longtime Evanston resident who’s currently in Courtside, Arizona, and Kevin Lewis of Cheyenne.

“John Holderegger has been so uplifting,” Piiparinen said. “I’d call him up and tell him the exercises we’re going to work on this week.”

He said his sister would help him count over the phone as he did his exercises. He’d consistently call Lewis and Holderegger at 7 a.m., even when he didn’t realize that Arizona didn’t spring forward like Wyoming did for daylight saving time, making it 6 a.m. for Holderegger.

“These guys have been with me the whole time,” he said. “It’s been wonderful.”

Holderegger was in a head-on motorcycle accident three years ago and said Piiparinen did the same for him back then and he’s happy to return the favor.

“Garry came to my side and gave me a lot of support,” he said. “We talk every day, like clockwork. And it seems to be helping, so that’s good.”

He said Wednesday that he was excited to be home over the weekend so he could go to church for the first time in a few weeks. But that wasn’t his first time back to Evanston since he was hospitalized. 

He said he made a deal with his doctor, who granted him five hours of leave on Saturday, March 16, so he could dance with his daughter, Jessie, at Evanston High School’s Junior Prom, which meant a lot to him. He was able to dance with her while someone held a belt around his waist, spotting him to make sure he didn’t fall.

Another special moment he had while at St. Mark’s was when Gov. Gordon signed a bill Piiparinen sponsored, HB 148, which increases transparency, requiring state officials to file financial disclosures concerning business ownership and contracts.

“Kevin (Lewis) was there with his phone, and they called me, and the governor asked if I had comments and who I wanted to thank,” Piiparinen said. “Then he signed the bill, and the governor is sending me a picture of him signing the bill and the pen he signed it with.”

That’s a rare moment that actually might not happen again for Piiparinen. He said he’s term-limiting himself; he plans to fulfill his current term and said he won’t run for re-election in 2020.

“I’d like nothing more than to find someone who could step up,” he said, adding that his decision not to seek re-election isn’t because of his health.

During his time serving in the House of Representatives, he’s prided himself on the open communication he has with constituents.

“Hopefully I’ve hit some benchmark with connecting to people,” he said. “If [my successor] can do that, then I’ve succeeded.”

Piiparinen said that after spending the weekend in Evanston, he will head back to St. Mark’s, where he’ll undergo cardiac rehab for two weeks.