A Virginia man suffered a heart attack while behind the wheel — and survived thanks to a “miracle.”
Jeff Geraci, 64, was driving home after a workout at Orange Theory Fitness in Virginia Beach last month when he suddenly stopped breathing.
"My widow maker, the lower anterior descending artery was 95% blocked, and the upper part, and it was 90% blocked on the lower part," he told WTVR.
His car veered over several lanes of traffic on First Colonial Road. He dodged other cars, but rammed into a sign for a local business, eventually coming to a stop in a parking lot.
Dr. Deepak Talreja, the clinical chief of cardiology for Sentara Health, whose office is just up the road, heard the crash.
"I sprint over there, calling 911 on my phone," the doctor recalled to the outlet. "When I got to your car, what I saw was the windshield was shattered and your airbags were deployed, and it was hard to see you because you were surrounded by airbags and a shattered windshield."
Geraci had no pulse and wasn’t breathing. Dr Talreja estimated he performed CPR for eight minutes.
This condition is known as sudden cardiac death, Talreja said.
Sudden cardiac death is the “sudden loss of all heart activity due to an irregular heart rhythm,” in which breathing stops and the individual loses consciousness, according to Mayo Clinic. Without immediate treatment, the condition can lead to death.
Quick response in this situation is crucial, the doctor said. "If he'd gone eight minutes or so without CPR and without blood flow, then we can probably resuscitate the heart for another 10 minutes or so, but the brain doesn't recover, and so [he] wouldn't be with us today."
When Geraci woke up, he was extremely confused, he recalled.
"The confusion when I woke up with things in my arm and people running around, it was like a dream, a muddled dream, and foggy," he told the outlet. "I asked the nurse what happened, and he said, 'You have a heart attack. You crashed your car.'"
Geraci thanked the cardiologist profusely for saving his life.
Heart disease runs in his family, so he’s made exercise a top priority. "My father had two heart attacks. My mother died of a heart attack... one sister has heart issues," Geraci said.
“I’ve been an athlete since I was 14 years old. I work out all the time. I run marathons,” Geraci said. He had been hoping: “It’s not going to happen to me.”
Now that a heart attack has happened — and he survived it — he’s branded his story a “miracle.”
“I'm blessed. It's a miracle. God was there, and thank God Dr. Talreja was there,” he told WTVR.
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