by Howie Mandel
The cardiologist listened to my chest and guess what he said? “Uh-oh, it’s back.” Hearing “uh-oh” from the cardiologist the second time was worse than hearing it the first time.
He then informed me that he was going to cardiovert me again at five p.m. the following day. I pointed out that it hadn’t worked the first time and asked what else he could do. He said, “I don’t want to tell you what the further options are.” When somebody says he doesn’t want to tell you, I get concerned. There was no reason for me to be concerned, but I was. Then he added, “We’re not there yet.”
“You have no idea where I am,” I said. “I’m making funeral arrangements. I now have to call more people and say goodbye. I’m running up a huge phone bill. I only have so many minutes on my plan.”
I knew that I was going to be put under again. Anybody who has had any surgery or procedure knows that you can’t eat or drink before you’re given anesthesia. I skipped breakfast and went right to work. This was the one place where I could distract myself from my health issues. I didn’t eat lunch, either.
We wrapped around four-thirty in the afternoon, and I had a driver take me to the hospital. Everybody else went back to the hotel to have a couple of drinks and eat dinner. They had plans. I was checking into the emergency room.
The procedure was repeated. Back on the gurney, IV drip, and two electronic plates pressed to my chest—and “Clear!”
When I woke up, the doctor told me that he tried twice but could not get my heart back in rhythm. My resting heart rate at that particular time was 160 beats per minute. Even though I was lying there, my heart rate was equivalent to what it would have been had I been running a marathon. So he gave me medication to lower my heart rate.
I was still a little groggy from the anesthesia, but I remember him telling me that I had to come back in a couple of days for another follow-up. I got off the gurney, checked out, and got a ride back to the hotel.
During the ride back, I called my road manager, Rich Thurber, and told him that I needed to eat. I hadn’t had any food or liquid since yesterday. I walked into the lobby of this bustling Sheraton Hotel where we were staying. Rich and several of the cast and crew were waiting for me, along with my mother.
I told them I wanted to go up to my room first to put on a sweater. It was January in Toronto, so I was cold. I think I needed an extra layer because they had shaved off my natural layering. I had never realized how warm little swatches of chest hair keep you in the winter.
I walked across the busy lobby to get on the elevator. I never press a public button with the end of my finger. So as I moved my knuckle to touch the Up button, it seemed to move away from me. I thought that was a little weird. Then I looked at the wall and it was also moving.
The next thing I remember was waking up on the floor, looking at the Sheraton lobby ceiling, lying in a puddle of my own urine. I don’t know how long I was out. There was a huge crowd watching paramedics work on me. The buttons on my shirt were undone, and they were tapping on my erratically shaved chest. I was aware that I had pissed myself but didn’t have the energy to get up and find a puddle or a ditch to fall in.
I was sure that I had just had a massive heart attack. I wasn’t even sure I was still alive. I thought maybe I was on the other side, which I must say looked very similar to this side. There were a lot of people I knew and paramedics. If you believe in life after death, why can’t there be paramedics there?
People were yelling my name very loudly over and over: “Howie! Howie! Howie!” I was saying, “What? What?” But I was thinking, Can’t you see I was just unconscious? Give me a moment.
The paramedic kept saying, “If you can hear me, squeeze my hand.”
I didn’t want to shake hands even in this condition, so I said, “No!”
“Why?” he asked in a concerned voice.
“I don’t do that,” I muttered as I tried unsuccessfully to lift my hand and give him a fist bump.
The paramedics loaded me on a gurney and took me to St. Michael’s Hospital.
I ended up in the emergency room, which played on so many different fears of mine. I thought I was on my deathbed. As precarious as I believed my physical status was, all my focus was on my mental issues. I was lying on a filthy gurney soaked with my own urine in a small room along with many other sick people. This was my worst nightmare.
After they drew every conceivable fluid from me, taped a mess of wires to my chest, and gave me an echocardiogram, it became clear that I had not had a heart attack. I had passed out because I hadn’t eaten, I was dehydrated, and I was full of chemicals from my procedure.
I felt weak, so I asked for something to eat. The nurses had ordered pizza and offered me a slice. Not only did it look delicious, it was a great distraction from my demons. The smell of melted cheese wafted into my nose as I picked up a slice. I was about to bring it to my mouth.
Now, you have to remember I was in the emergency room on a gurney. I was separated by whoever else was in that room by nothing but a curtain.
At the moment the pizza hit my lips, I heard projectile vomiting from the next gurney, followed by gagging and alarm bells. Needless to say, I couldn’t eat. I put down the pizza and screamed, “Get me out of here!” I’m sure my heart rate surpassed 160 at that point.
The nurses responded by rushing me upstairs to a semiprivate room on the cardiac floor. Semiprivate meant I had a roommate. He was an elderly Italian gentleman who had just undergone quadruple bypass surgery.
I had refused to get undressed, so I was lying in bed fully clothed. My roommate was wearing a standard-issue hospital gown. He would get out of bed and walk over to the window to look at the moon. While he was looking at the moon, I was left to stare at his moon. It was very disconcerting.
At this point, news of my hospitalization had hit TMZ before I had a chance to call my family. My daughter called me crying, asking if I was okay. I assured her I was.
As luck would have it, the medication lowered my heart rate. I was told I would be fine if I just kept taking the medication. The doctor asked me to return a week later to make sure the dosage was correct and my heart was still in rhythm.
I went back a week later, and of course, my rhythm was off. It was explained to me that I didn’t have a plumbing problem, I had an electrical problem. Our heart is beating because there is an electrical signal shocking it—“tdzut, beat, tdzut, beat….” But mine goes “tdzut tdzut, beat….” I hope I spelled that right.
• • •
At the end of March, I flew back to Los Angeles. Even though I had been taking my meds continually, the symptoms were becoming progressively worse. I had become weaker, short of breath, and dizzy.
As soon as I met with my new cardiologist, Dr. Cannom, he recommended a procedure called an ablation. I immediately assumed this was the invasive procedure I had not been told about when I was first diagnosed in January as a brokenhearted comedian. I sat there silently for a minute, contemplating whether I should ask him to explain this procedure. I concluded I had no choice.
Dr. Cannom explained the procedure more eloquently, but this is how it sounded to a fearful, neurotic layman: They would rip a gaping hole in your groin, through which they jammed a camera and a laser gun. These instruments would tear their way past your stomach, spleen, and intestines on the way up into the interior chambers of your heart. Once there, they would search for the area where the electrical charge was misfiring. Once found, the area would be shot with a laser and burned beyond recognition.
Along with the many issues I had with this procedure, the first question I had was “Why do they have to enter through the groin?” I personally didn’t care about the scar. I told the doctor that I thought the neck or shoulders would be a lot closer and easier. But he explained the only route was through the groin. I found it fascinating that whether it is a romantic encounter or a medical procedure, the way to a man’s heart is always through his groin.
Before he had finished his expla
nation, I had already decided this was not for me.
“I don’t want to do that,” I told him.
“I think that’s eventually going to be the answer, but I can first try another medication,” he said.
He explained that he would need to keep a close eye on my condition. I was fitted with a monitor that I had to wear 24/7.
I am wearing one as I write this. The monitor consists of several wires attached to nodes that are stuck to my chest. The wires feed into a transmitter that is synced with a BlackBerry clipped to my pants. The device is monitored by LifeWatch, based in Chicago.
Here’s how it works. When my heart goes out of rhythm, the BlackBerry automatically calls LifeWatch, and they, in turn, call me and ask, “How are you feeling?” I tell them, “You know how I’m feeling, otherwise you wouldn’t be calling. Sorry I can’t talk now, I can’t breathe.”
To distract myself from my heart problems, I went online and looked up notables who passed away in 2009. I learned that Marilyn Chambers and Ricardo Montalbán had died. As I scrolled down the list and studied the causes of death, my wife came into the room and saw what I was doing. She told me to stop looking at the death list and find something else.
So I went on Amazon.com to check what number this book is. I did this in April, seven months before the book was even published and only six and a half chapters into the writing process. It was number 1,566,167, which fascinated me, because it was not yet written, let alone on sale. I’m not sure I’ll make it that far. But once the book is written and actually available, I’m hoping it will move up the list.
On May 1, 2009, I’m lying in bed watching TV at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. The breaking news is that Danny Ganz, a venerable Las Vegas performer, has just died of heart failure at fifty-two. So I quickly turn off the TV.
For the next couple of days, my life becomes incredibly hellish. I’m terribly weak. I can’t breathe. Every time I’m out in public, people are saying to me, “Can you believe that Danny Ganz died of a heart attack? He was only fifty-two.” They have no idea that they are talking to a fifty-three-year-old who has wires taped to his chest attached to a BlackBerry. Coinciding with this moment, some strangers from Chicago are seeing a readout of an erratic heart beating at a rate of 160.
I spend each and every day conserving my energy so that I can get up onstage and be funny for an hour and a half. Every moment onstage, I’m trying not to fall down and die—and I don’t mean dying as a comedian does with bad material, I mean dying as in Danny Ganz, Marilyn Chambers, and Ricardo Montalbán.
I have to say, writing this chapter is giving me more palpitations. The bell on my heart monitor is ringing. LifeWatch is now calling. I have to go. I hope I survive and I’m able to talk to you in the next chapter.
My entire life is about distracting myself from horrible thoughts that constantly creep into my head. If I’m not doing something productive, I will find something to distract me. These distractions come upon me impulsively. Many people seek relief from their demons through food, alcohol, or drugs. My drug of choice is humor, sometimes at others’ expense. I can’t tell you how many times I end up regretting what I have done. In those instances, I would have been better off living with my demons. Here are two examples I can promise you I’m not proud of.
I had begun St. Elsewhere, and my notoriety was soaring. I had also become much more comfortable in Los Angeles because a small group of friends from Toronto had moved out. My two closest friends were Michael Rotenberg, who would become my lawyer and later my manager, and my first comedy friend, Lou Dinos, who became my opening act.
St. Elsewhere was going on summer hiatus, and I was about to embark on a sixty-city tour sponsored by a beer company. Lou could not have been more excited. He would call me every day and give me the countdown: “Ten more days to go! Nine more days to go!” He was driving me crazy. One day for no other reason than a fun distraction, I decided to burst his bubble, though I didn’t premeditate where I was going with the prank.
As he did every day, Lou called and announced, “Six more days to go!”
I stopped him. “Lou, Lou, hang on,” I said. “I don’t know how to tell you this. I have some bad news … you’re not going on tour.”
“How can that be?” he said. “It’s six days away, and we are going for three months….”
“It’s ridiculous, but I’m fighting it.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“I will tell you exactly what happened,” I improvised. “The beer company is funding the tour. For me to fly my opening act to every city will cost too much money. Your airfare alone is well over twenty thousand dollars. What they want to do is have a radio station in each market hold a contest to pick a local opening act.” I knew he couldn’t afford to pay his way.
“Oh, my God …,” he said, his voice trailing off. “What am I going to do? It’s not like I can book clubs now. I was counting on this for rent money. I’m going to lose my apartment. What can I do?”
“Please, Lou, leave it with me,” I reassured him. “I’m going to see if I can pull some strings.”
I hung up the phone, leaving Lou destroyed. Terry was standing next to me. She told me that was incredibly mean and that I should call him back. She was right, but for reasons I can’t explain there was no turning back for me. Instead, I called Michael Rotenberg, who was my lawyer at the time. I told him what I had done to Lou, and I asked him to play along with this concept. Then I called Mark Tinker, one of the producers of St. Elsewhere, and told him to also play along.
Mark knew Lou from another practical joke I had played on Lou. In that one, I told Lou that I had landed him a guest spot on an episode of St. Elsewhere. I had explained that there were no costumes, so he should wear his own clothes. He was playing an accident victim, so we doused him in fake blood. For two days, we had him sit in every scene soaked in blood … just outside the frame of the camera. Of course, Lou didn’t know this.
At one point, we were filming a scene in a boardroom with all the other actors. Lou was sitting at the end of the table, covered in blood. He said, “Can I ask a question? Why would I be in a boardroom?” I told him that his condition was so critical that we wanted to keep an eye on him. Until he sat at home and watched the episode, he had no idea he wasn’t in it.
As mean as that prank was, it paled in comparison with telling Lou he was no longer taking part in my summer tour.
I called Lou back. “I’m devastated,” he said. “What’s going to happen? How can we do this?”
“Lou, I’m going to loan you money for your rent because they came up with one solution that’s so ridiculous that I cannot have a friend do this,” I said.
“I’ll do it!” he said. “Just tell me what it is.”
“Okay, but I’m telling you I do not want you to do this, and I will pay your rent.” I told Lou that Michael Rotenberg had negotiated a deal with the airline for a special spouse fare. “If you travel as the spouse of somebody, you go free.”
“Okay …,” he said, growing excited.
“But here’s the thing,” I continued. “This is grand larceny, because we are defrauding the airline. If we act like you are the spouse, it’s like twenty thousand dollars of theft in ticket revenue.”
He cut me off. “I’m willing to do it. What do I have to do?”
“Here’s what Michael negotiated,” I said. “We will pay for all of your clothes, your hair, and your makeup. But you have to travel as a woman to qualify for the fare.”
“Are you serious?” he asked.
“Dead serious,” I said. “But if you don’t want to do it, I will loan you the rent money.”
“No, I gotta do it,” he said.
“It’s got to be totally your decision, because I think it’s crazy, and I wouldn’t do it,” I said.
“I have no choice,” he said.
I did, but I chose to keep going.
So we sent him over to the St. Elsewhere wardrobe department. Playing it completely
straight on Mark’s orders, they gave him a dress and a wig shorter than his own hair. They put a little bit of makeup on his cheeks. His hairy legs were exposed, and he had a five o’clock shadow. There was no reason whatsoever for anyone to even remotely mistake this creature for a woman.
He packed his normal clothes and sent them in a trunk on a separate flight with all my clothes and equipment, as we always did. We were flying from Los Angeles to Philadelphia and then taking a limo to Atlantic City for the first stop on the tour.
When it came time to leave for the airport, Terry pulled me aside and told me that I had to take a pair of his pants with me. I told her it was funnier to just let it play out. She promptly stopped speaking to me.
Lou and I headed for the airport in a limousine. It’s the only time where the driver never talked to me. He was driving Howie Mandel and the worst possible cross-dresser. Thank God TMZ didn’t exist yet.
We arrived at the terminal. Lou was wearing a dress and his baseball jacket, smoking a cigarette, and looking completely miserable. I don’t think he realized what he had gotten himself into or how he would feel out in public dressed like this. It wasn’t under the guise of being funny, but rather out of the desperation of not losing his apartment.
At check-in, a couple with their kids recognized me from St. Elsewhere and asked for an autograph. Being the comedian that he is, Lou walked over to me and put his arm around me very effeminately. In the middle of the autograph, the mother grabbed the kids’ hands and pulled them away, as if to say, “This is not a good place for our children to be. Howie Mandel is a freak.”
I turned around to Lou, grabbed him by his coat as hard as I could, and threw him up against the wall. “What the fuck do you think you are doing!” I said to him.
“If I’m going to be dressed like this, I want to have some fun with it,” he said.
“You can have fun on your own time,” I lectured him.
“This is grand larceny. This is twenty thousand dollars of theft under my name. We could both end up in prison!” Lou started to tremble. “Howie, I’m so sorry,” he said. His voice was quivering. He sulked over to a chair and sat down. I snapped a picture.
