This Little Guy Saved My Life.

...with a big assist from tlhe Upstate open-heart team.

In the excitement leading up to his son's birth, 36-year-old Eric almost missed something critical to his son's future: the not-so-classic signs of a heart attack.

While shoveling snow, Eric felt a stabbing pain in his back, followed by shortness of breath, nausea, and sweating. Because the symptoms subsided, Eric just assumed he had the flu.

A week later, his son Carter was born, Eric was ecstatic, but, oddly, he was still hort of breath. "I'd never really been sick before," he says. "But I owed it to Carter to find out what was going on."

At Upstate University Hospital, Eric learned he'd suffered a major heart attack and – with three blocked arteries – was on a track for a second, possibly fatal, event.

The next day, Upstate cardiothoracic surgeon Charles Lutz MD performed triple bypass surgery. A week later, Eric was back home, on the mend and even more ecstatic about his newborn son.

"If it weren't for Carter – and the Upstate open heart team," Eric says, "I wouldn't be here."

Knowing changes everything.^SM