It was a real heart-stopper.
Brookhaven Deputy Supervisor Neil Foley is thankful to be alive – and even more grateful to the staff at South Shore University Hospital on Long Island for bringing him back from the dead when his cardiovascular system gave out in March.
“I watched him die in front of us,” emergency-room Dr. Alyssa Lorenzana recently told The Post. “That is something I’ll never forget.”
Foley, 58, took a day last week to personally thank everybody involved in his miraculous recovery as part of Northwell’s Thank a Lifesaver Program.
“Because of the professionalism here and the amazing work these men and women do in healthcare, I’m here,” he said.
“I’m still a father of four, still married, and I’m still around, and I can’t thank them enough.”
Days before his life-threatening incident — during which he coded three times and had to be shocked back from death’s grip three times — Foley played a round of golf with pals in Florida.
He then went to Albany for work meetings and, while there, essentially ignored warning signs about his body.
The local pol did end up going to an upstate hospital with chest pains but told doctors, “I feel fine” and checked out against medical advice.
“They called me back and said, ‘Your numbers are not good. You have to go see a cardiologist,’ ” Foley recalled.
But the deputy supervisor did not move urgently and was willing to put off the doctor’s appointment for a few days because “I was really feeling better,” he said.
“Mistake, mistake, mistake, mistake,” emphasized Foley, who did not know the blockage in his heart could disguise itself by opening and closing.
He said he woke up “with the elephant on my chest” days later when back on Long Island and realized, “I’m in trouble.”
Foley was rushed to the Northwell facility in Bay Shore, where, again, he was feeling fine and conversational before Lorenzana “watched him just code” as the blockage reclosed.
“I think that was the scariest part,” Lorenzana said of Foley’s heart attack from lack of blood flow.
He coded twice more in what interventional cardiac cath nurse practitioner Caroline Goss called “a very dangerous and fatal event,” which went “completely through the entire muscle of the heart.”
Staffers also had to shock Foley on three occasions to bring him back from death’s grip, said interventional cardiologist Luis Gruberg.
Foley was given three stents and discharged three days later like a new man.
Lorenzana and Gruberg said Foley owes his second chance at a healthy life to everybody in the hospital who did their job right and expeditiously.
“It’s a big teamwork,” Gruberg said.
Lorenzana couldn’t go home that day without later visiting Foley, saying he’s one of the few patients who’ve had such a lasting impact on her.
“He looked at me. He said, ‘You’re my angel.’ I was like, ‘No, I’m not. There’s a lot of people who got you to this point.’ ”
Foley has not only dedicated recent months to expressing gratitude but has also started spreading the word to others in his circle, urging them to get tested for such issues.
“It’s really remarkable to see how touching one person’s life affects something else,” said Dr. Jennifer Goebel, who started the Thank a Lifesaver program to highlight cases such as Foley’s.
Foley is now meanwhile taking vacations and using coping skills to manage the stressors of his job, which he said along with family history were major contributors to the episode.
“I have to take care of my body first before I can take care of my work and everything else,” said the pol, who openly acknowledged he is in counseling to deal with the trauma of his heart attack.
Most of all, he’s thrilled to know that others are learning from his experience, he said.
“I’ve had almost 10 people tell me since March, ‘Neil, without hearing your story, I would never have gone to the hospital – and you saved my life,’ ” Foley said.
