As he was coming out of anesthesia post-surgery, Jason Mortensen laid eyes on his wife, Candice, and literally could not believe how lucky he was. Video of Mortensen’s awesome reaction went viral, garnering about 7.3 million views.

“He had been acting like that for about 20 minutes before I pulled out my phone,’’ Candice Mortensen said. “I finally realized, I need to get this on video so he can see how he acts, and so I can show people because I was alone, so I was excited. He genuinely didn’t remember a thing about that when I showed him the video.”

This was John’s sixth surgery on his hernia injury. He had this one to fix tears from a previous surgery. His wife was waiting in the wings as he exited the operation.

A Slate article on Tuesday suggested that the video may have been a hoax, even quoting psychologists to back up the assertion. However, the couple says the video was absolutely real.

“I heard that on Jimmy Kimmel some video was faked, and I can understand all the skepticism,’’ Jason said. “I talked to my doctor yesterday, and he says he’s gotten like 150 phone calls, so I finally gave him permission to tell them that I had the surgery.”

View the hilarious video below.