The 68-year-old at the helm of America’s largest bank, is currently in remission following a throat cancer diagnosis about 10 years ago. And in March of 2020, he had a near fatal heart event.

“My heart, I just, I mean, the pain was extraordinary,” he told CBS. “I thought I heard it rip. It was an aortic dissection. I had a tear in the aorta.” 

An aortic dissection is a life-threatening condition involving a tear in the body’s largest blood vessel, which delivers oxygen-rich blood from the heart to the rest of the body. If the tear is in the part of the aorta that exits the heart, the most common kind, emergency surgery is required. 

Jamie Dimon, 68, has faced two major health scares: throat cancer a decade ago and an aortic dissection in 2020. Reflecting on the life-threatening heart surgery, he recalls the extraordinary pain and his rare, immediate post-surgery recovery. pic.twitter.com/yhAotWwTYX

— CBS Sunday Morning 🌞 (@CBSSunday) January 12, 2025

Dimon, who said he was in the operating room for seven to eight hours, acknowledged that he was fully aware of the possibility he might not survive. 

After 20 years at the bank, Dimon has grown the Fortune 500 company to 320,000 employees, and grown assets by nearly $3 trillion. He says he never felt like he had to “rely on other people,” but following the life-saving surgery, when “you got tubes in your heart and tubes in your lungs and tubes down your jugular” there was no other option. 

“The doctor told me I was one of the only people he’s ever seen wake up immediately after surgery like that,” he said, tearing up. “I waved at my kids, who had been sitting there the whole time. And then, I was back asleep in the ICU.”  Dimon has three daughters in their 30s.

After a week in the hospital, and a month of recovery, Dimon was back to work, traveling globally—a major part of his leadership position. 

Dimon tells Stahl that he loves his job and that it motivates him. Still, he now admits he gets “exhausted” by Friday and knows when it’s time “to go home.”