Dean and Me_ A Love Story - Jerry Lewis [105]
I wish I could say Dean and I reconnected then and there, but it took a little while. I had to get my own house in order first. My spine pain was like an insatiable monster. I was living in a private world of agony and addiction, and my family saw me—when they saw me—at my worst. I kept those who had been nearest to me at the greatest distance, and some permanent emotional scars formed. My long-suffering wife suffered the most. My boys came a close second.
Meanwhile, I traveled around the world, not just performing but also seeking out doctors of every description, trying to find one who could bring me some relief. A famous surgeon said he’d be glad to operate on me, but that there was a good chance I’d get worse instead of better after the procedure, and a 50 percent chance that I’d be paralyzed for life. I’ve always liked to gamble, but I didn’t like those odds.
Friendship is priceless.
It seemed as though there was no way out. I don’t even like to think about the desperation I was feeling by 1978, when I was up to thirteen Percodans a day. Even hardened survivors of drug addiction get wide-eyed when they hear that number. My self-medication was a full-out assault on my internal organs.
Then fate stepped in, with a little sleight of hand. I’ve always liked magic tricks—the key is getting the audience to look one place while the trick happens somewhere else. It was a bit like that in my case: God played a card trick.
One night at the end of September, I was at the Sahara in Vegas, talking with the hotel’s music director, my pal Jack Eglash. Jack had always suffered from migraines, but that night he had a particularly incapacitating one. I got an idea. “Well, Jack,” I told him, “you should have a specialist check you out. As a matter of fact, there’s a top medical team at Methodist Hospital in Houston. I can call and make the arrangements.”
“Forget it,” Jack said. “I’m scared to death of doctors. And hospitals.”
But I’m a stubborn SOB, and for whatever reason, Jack’s case got me going. The next day, I phoned the world-famous heart surgeon Dr. Michael DeBakey at Methodist Hospital. Michael had been a member of the MDA Scientific Advisory Committee since 1970, and over that time he’d also become my best friend. I talked with him at length about Jack’s condition, and Michael felt he ought to be seen. I had a room set aside for him at the hospital.
Jack dug his heels in. “I’m sorry, Jerry. I can’t do it. I’m not going.”
“Jack, Dr. DeBakey has a team of specialists waiting. Don’t be a baby. I’ll take you there myself.”
We were in Houston the next day. Jack was in his hospital room, getting a workup, and Michael DeBakey, his assistant, and I were headed down the hall to see him when I keeled over.
I came to in a hospital bed just a few doors down from Jack. Dr. DeBakey thought I’d had a heart attack—the pain in my stomach and chest was excruciating—but tests soon ruled out a coronary. When they X-rayed me, they found an ulcer the size of a lemon in my abdomen. The Percodan had masked the pain as the ulcer grew. Michael said that if it had remained undetected, I probably would have bled to death in two weeks.
Jack went home, but I stayed. When Michael sat down and talked to me about my condition, I fessed up about my addiction. He knew I’d been taking Percodan, but he’d thought it was two or three pills a day. When he heard what I’d actually been swallowing, he knew we had two goals: to eliminate the ulcer, and to kill the monkey on my back. Dr. DeBakey put me under heavy sedation, with a drip feeding me liquid nourishment, and gave me periodic steroid injections for the spinal pain. I lived in a twilight state for the next ten days as my blood circulated through an instrument and came back clean. When I woke up, my ulcer was gone and so was my addiction.
There was one important thing, Michael DeBakey told me: Coke and Percodan, he explained, were the same to me as coffee and cigarettes were to many smokers—inextricably bound, one triggering the need for the other. I must never let Coca-Cola pass