SUMMERFIELD, N.C.-- A Guilford county man says a motorcycle wreck helped save his life.
It started as a crash, but turned into something more serious.
Eric Charaba is no stranger to bikes. He owns four of them and has been riding for years. But this past spring, he bought a different kind of bike a motorcycle.
"This particular bike, I just purchased. I maybe had it for a month," Charaba said.
In March, he was taking it for a spin when he lost control.
"It was more me personally than anything else. I was just kind of zoned out. realized I was going a little too fast," Charaba said.
He crashed rounding a curve not too far from home and wound up with two compression fractures in his spine.
"But then the doctor said he noticed something unusual didn't really say what it was at the moment. But said, 'Hey I want to make a couple phone calls before I go into anymore detail.'" Charaba explained.
That doctor called Dr. Hendrickson a heart doctor at Cone Hospital in Greensboro.
"So I have a bicuspid [aortic] valve in my heart since I was born that I never knew about it." Charaba said.
Dr. Hendrickson says the defect caused an aneurysm which would require surgery.
"Finding it when it's asymptomatic is vitally important and in his case probably saved his life," Dr. Hendrickson said.
Scans showed Charaba's aorta was almost twice as large as it should have been. It could have ruptured at any time, but thanks to the surgery Dr. Hendrickson completed there's no longer a chance of that.
And in this story, the motorcycle and it's crash ended up being Charaba's saving grace.
"I heard it 1000 times between that and my surgery, you shouldn't be on a motorcycle. But in this case, if I hadn't been, I may not of found out about it," Charaba said.