A Virginia man who suddenly suffered a nearly lethal heart attack while behind the wheel wound up crashing his car next to a cardiologist’s office in a “miracle” stroke of luck, according to a report.
Jeff Geraci was driving home from a workout class last month when he suddenly stopped breathing, causing him to swerve over multiple lanes of traffic before hitting a sign and coming to a stop in a parking lot, WTVR reported.
“I sat in the car because something didn’t quite feel right. Sipped some coffee, and I was going to sit there and close my eyes for a few minutes. But instead, I decided to drive home,” Geraci told the outlet.
The 64-year-old, who was experiencing a severe “widow maker” heart attack, happened to crash near the medical office of Dr. Deepak Talreja, the chief of cardiology for Sentara Health, the outlet said.
Talreja bolted over to the scene of the crash while on the phone with 911.
“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,” he said, speaking to Geraci.
When the seasoned doctor arrived at the scene, he assessed Geraci and recognized his condition was serious.
“You weren’t breathing, and you didn’t have a pulse — SCD, sudden cardiac death. And what that means is the heart just isn’t doing the job, and so it’s a form of death,” Talreja explained.
“But fortunately, we got things restarted very quickly, and so God was watching out.”
If medical help didn’t reach Geraci within eight minutes, his heart likely would not have been able to be resuscitated, the doctor said.
“My widow maker, the lower anterior descending artery was 95% blocked, and the upper part, and it was 90% blocked on the lower part,” Geraci told the outlet.
“The confusion when I woke up with things in my arm and people running around, it was like a dream, muddled dream, and foggy,” he recalled of the moment he woke up having survived the attack.
“I asked the nurse what happened, and he said, ‘You have a heart attack. You crashed your car,” Geraci said.
He said his family has a history of heart issues, but he believed his active lifestyle could help prevent him from a similar fate.
“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 ran marathons, [I thought] it’s not going to happen to me.”
Geraci has returned to work after the attack and is now focusing on making healthy changes to his diet.
“It’s such a testimony of God’s greatness, of all the things that had to happen to keep me alive,” he said.
“I’m blessed. It’s a miracle. God was there, and thank God Dr. Talreja was there.”
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