Leo Gillick
A man in Virginia chose the best place to have a heart attack, and ended up delivering himself right into a cardiologist’s office.
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Having a heart attack while driving is a terrifying prospect. Not only is the heart giving up, but it’s happening during the operation of heavy machinery. It’s not uncommon and is often fatal. However, when Jeff Geraci had a heart attack, fate was on his side. He chose one of the best places he possibly could have to pass out.
- After a bout of exercise in Orange Theory Fitness in the Hilltop section of Virginia Beach, he was driving home. However, disaster struck when he had a heart attack that made him lose consciousness. His car careened off the road and flew towards some buildings.
- “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 WTVR. “I asked the nurse what happened, and he said, ‘You have a heart attack. You crashed your car.”
Shocked and shaken, he asked how he had survived.
Lucky Landing
Despite passing out behind the wheel, Jeff had survived. It was all due to a stroke of luck. When he had passed out due to a heart attack, he had crashed his car right beside a cardiologist’s office. Dr. Deepak Talreja came rushing out of her office as soon as she heard the commotion. Her next actions saved his life.
- “I sprint over there, calling 911 on my phone. When I got to your car, what I saw was that 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.”
- Immediately, she knew what had gone wrong. “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.”
- The cardiologist’s quick reaction saved the man’s life after a heart attack made him crash into her office. “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.”
It’s an early warning sign for Jeff. He might not be so lucky next time.
