Was I lucky to survive three brushes with death — or unlucky to still be here, sorting through the wreckage? A heart attack. A cardiac arrest. A heart valve replacement. I survived all three — and now I’m figuring out what survival actually looks like.
Three Strikes and Still Beating is my twenty-two-episode documentary memoir — a limited series that follows my journey from the morning of my first heart attack, to the near-death experience of cardiac arrest, to the slow walk into my home after open-heart surgery — a story that unfolds over seven years. It’s about hospitals, doctors, uncertainty, and fear, yes, but also about marriage, fatherhood, work and career, faith, and what it means to keep rebuilding a life when it gets torpedoed. This isn’t a podcast about advice, inspiration, or being strong. It’s raw. It’s honest. Sometimes dark. Sometimes funny. Just me, processing the absurdity of what happened — physically, emotionally, spiritually — and saying the things I couldn’t say in the moment.
Through humor, vulnerability, and a few haunting saxophone motifs, I try to make sense of what it means to keep going after life stops your heart three times.
I’m A.K. Thiagaraj, a San Francisco Bay Area software professional whose creative life was catalyzed by those three cardiac events. What started as an attempt to process trauma and disbelief turned into a story worth sharing — one that might make a few people laugh, others cry, and maybe help someone feel a little less alone in their own private battles.
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Was I lucky to survive three brushes with death — or unlucky to still be here, sorting through the wreckage? A heart attack. A cardiac arrest. A heart valve replacement. I survived all three — and now I’m figuring out what survival actually looks like.
Three Strikes and Still Beating is my twenty-two-episode documentary memoir — a limited series that follows my journey from the morning of my first heart attack, to the near-death experience of cardiac arrest, to the slow walk into my home after open-heart surgery — a story that unfolds over seven years. It’s about hospitals, doctors, uncertainty, and fear, yes, but also about marriage, fatherhood, work and career, faith, and what it means to keep rebuilding a life when it gets torpedoed. This isn’t a podcast about advice, inspiration, or being strong. It’s raw. It’s honest. Sometimes dark. Sometimes funny. Just me, processing the absurdity of what happened — physically, emotionally, spiritually — and saying the things I couldn’t say in the moment.
Through humor, vulnerability, and a few haunting saxophone motifs, I try to make sense of what it means to keep going after life stops your heart three times.
I’m A.K. Thiagaraj, a San Francisco Bay Area software professional whose creative life was catalyzed by those three cardiac events. What started as an attempt to process trauma and disbelief turned into a story worth sharing — one that might make a few people laugh, others cry, and maybe help someone feel a little less alone in their own private battles.
One minute I was delivering a speech about Alabama football.The next, I was on the floor — blue, pulseless, and unconscious.In this episode, my voice fades and others take over: my wife, my friends, and the strangers who tried to bring me back.Five shocks. Thirty minutes without an ambulance.A church with no defibrillator.And somehow, I’m still here to tell it.It’s the night Toastmasters turned into a trauma ward — and survival became my most unexpected performance yet.
Three Strikes and Still Beating
Was I lucky to survive three brushes with death — or unlucky to still be here, sorting through the wreckage? A heart attack. A cardiac arrest. A heart valve replacement. I survived all three — and now I’m figuring out what survival actually looks like.
Three Strikes and Still Beating is my twenty-two-episode documentary memoir — a limited series that follows my journey from the morning of my first heart attack, to the near-death experience of cardiac arrest, to the slow walk into my home after open-heart surgery — a story that unfolds over seven years. It’s about hospitals, doctors, uncertainty, and fear, yes, but also about marriage, fatherhood, work and career, faith, and what it means to keep rebuilding a life when it gets torpedoed. This isn’t a podcast about advice, inspiration, or being strong. It’s raw. It’s honest. Sometimes dark. Sometimes funny. Just me, processing the absurdity of what happened — physically, emotionally, spiritually — and saying the things I couldn’t say in the moment.
Through humor, vulnerability, and a few haunting saxophone motifs, I try to make sense of what it means to keep going after life stops your heart three times.
I’m A.K. Thiagaraj, a San Francisco Bay Area software professional whose creative life was catalyzed by those three cardiac events. What started as an attempt to process trauma and disbelief turned into a story worth sharing — one that might make a few people laugh, others cry, and maybe help someone feel a little less alone in their own private battles.
