64-year-old Jeff Geraci thought he was just driving home from a workout in Virginia when his body decided to quit on him.
A massive “widow maker” heart attack hit, his heart stopped, and he blacked out behind the wheel. His car veered across lanes, smashed into a sign, and came to a stop—right outside a cardiologist’s office.
And not just any cardiologist. Dr. Deepak Talreja, chief of cardiology at Sentara Health, happened to be inside, phone in hand, with 911. He sprinted out, found Geraci surrounded by airbags, unresponsive, and without a pulse.
“You weren’t breathing, and you didn’t have a pulse—sudden cardiac death,” Talreja later told him. Within minutes, the medical team got his heart restarted. Eight minutes later would’ve been too late.
Geraci’s arteries were almost completely blocked—95% in one, 90% in another. His family history was full of heart trouble, but he thought marathons and workouts made him untouchable. They didn’t.
Now alive and recovering, Geraci calls it a miracle. “God was there. I’m blessed,” he said. Honestly, if fate has a sense of humor, this was it.
Although I do not believe in things like gods and ghosts, but whoa…
This is like someone playing with your life. Let’s make his heart stop and crash his car right at one of the best cardiologists’ offices. Still, if you ask me why this happened?
I think the dude’s diet is not great…Jeff’s family has a history of heart attacks, and a family history of heart disease is a red flag that doesn’t vanish with marathon miles. Exercise helps, diet helps, sure, but plaque buildup in the coronary arteries can be silent for years.
You can run ultras and still carry a “widow maker” blockage that never gave a whisper of pain until it didn’t. What I wanted to say is you can’t out-exercise every risk.
Yeah, you might assume it as God’s will or something else, but I’m going to say this as dumb timing.
THE WHY: LUCK
Just 8 more minutes and the guy would’ve been with his god. Life giving you second chances has gotta be 5 stars on my scale.
“Look, most of us want a normal life without any drama, but life in this world is always strange, and uncertain.
I don’t need your email. I don’t want to bug you with a billion notifications. All I ask is this, if you felt something here, if this made you think, laugh, or even shake your head in disbelief, just bookmark ‘Averagebeing.com’ and come back tomorrow.
That’s it. No strings. Just you, me, and this stupid world.”
