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Mac Cheek's dad died of a heart attack at age 56. So as Mac neared that age, he took precautions.

He regularly saw a doctor in his hometown of Greensboro, North Carolina. He knew his cholesterol and blood pressure numbers and took medication to keep them in safe ranges. He enjoyed not only his 57th birthday but also his 60th and 65th.

Then something strange happened at work. He told his colleagues he was tired. In the five years they'd worked together at the industrial textile business, as they later told him, they'd never heard him say that.

Mac left work early – another first – that afternoon in November 2022. When he got home, he headed straight for bed. At 2:30 a.m., he woke up his wife, Erin Cheek. He was having a heart attack, he told her, and needed her to call 911.

Mac's heart stopped twice on the way to the hospital. Paramedics shocked his heart back into a sustainable rhythm.

In the cardiac catheterization laboratory, tests showed that one of his cardiac arteries was 100% blocked. Doctors performed a balloon angioplasty and then implanted a temporary heart pump. They put Mac into a coma for seven days to ease the trauma on his body from the heart attack and the cardiac arrests.

Over the next 17 days, a parade of visitors came to his bed in the cardiac intensive care unit. The hospital allowed more than the rules allow.

Why?

"They didn't think I was going to make it," Mac said.

He learned that from a reliable source: his daughter, Caroline Aberman, a physician assistant in that emergency room.

A few months into his recovery, Aberman was having dinner with her parents when Mac asked what he called "a crazy question": Why didn't doctors insert a stent into his heart to open the blockage?

"Dad," Aberman said, "there was not one person in the emergency room who thought you would last long enough to put a stent in."

During those awful and frightening days, Erin knew doctors feared the worst. More than once, Mac's cardiologist used the phrase, "We want to prepare you …"

One day, though, that doctor came into Mac's room and said, "Erin, he's actually turned the corner." She burst into tears.

Within days, Mac came out of the coma – groggy and having hallucinations with no recollection of where he was or what had happened. But each day brought him closer to being the Mac everyone knew and cherished – determined, optimistic and perhaps just a little bit stubborn.

"Once I was able to get up, I wanted to be walking," he said. "I had so many tubes in me – a friend told me he counted 17 at one point – it took a half hour to get them all out so I could walk. By the time I left, I was doing laps around the unit. I wanted to go home."

He was discharged with instructions to go to outpatient cardiac rehabilitation for 30 days. Their son, Trey Cheek, moved home from Philadelphia to help. Erin was more nervous than Mac about him being out of the hospital. She offered him the option of sleeping downstairs so he wouldn't have to navigate steps. He turned it down. She watched him while he slept to make sure he was breathing. He got mad and asked what she was doing.

But they've been married for 40 years. They've traveled the world and put 480,000 miles on Mac's 2011 car during their U.S. travels, collecting memories and adventures, all intertwined with love.

Mac's path to better health became both of theirs. His blood pressure is the lowest it's been in 30 years. He'd lost 25 pounds in the hospital and, determined to keep them off, cut back on fried foods and fast food. The couple began focusing on eating more fish, vegetables, fruits and other healthy foods. They began walking together.

"In the beginning, he was really slow," Erin said. "Within three days, he was walking great. It's amazing how quickly he could turn around what had happened."

A running store in their neighborhood has a series of 5K races that Mac began doing with friends. He hasn't been cleared to run, but last year he fast-walked 17 events. He still loves his job, but he's content to leave at 5 p.m. and head home.

What happened that November strengthened the family's faith, tightened the bond they share, and showed them the importance of appreciating every day and every moment.

"All the stars shone that night," Mac said.

Mac believes there's a reason his life was spared. So, every chance he gets, Mac tells friends to listen to their doctors. To take their medicine. And, if they ever think they're having a heart attack, call 911.

"If I can help someone else, even just one person," he said, "we've done good things."

Stories From the Heart chronicles the inspiring journeys of heart disease and stroke survivors, caregivers and advocates.