Drew Carey said he didn’t realize he was having a heart attack while performing on his hit show in the 1990s and early 2000s because he believed the misconception that people clutch their hearts and collapse.
“I was supposed to go back to taping because I was really fat,” Carey told Ted Danson on the “Where Everybody Knows Your Name” podcast on Wednesday.
Carey said she decided to start jogging to lose weight before returning to the show.
“So I had a little chest heart monitor and stuff like that on. And then I was jogging down the street and my heart rate went up to like 160 and I was like, ‘Oh,’ and it felt like my shoulders were going numb.”
He said of his experience: “Everything I read was the symptoms of a heart attack, but I thought if I had a heart attack, I would fall down groaning like in a cartoon. That’s what happens when you have a heart attack.”
His immediate reaction was, “Oh, that’s really worrying. Let me take it easy.”
The comedian’s heart slowed to about 80 beats per minute, he said, “which is already a high heart rate anyway. Then when he started again, his heart rate immediately went up and that happened several times.”
Carey said she had also passed a deer while running and had heard that it “could be a sign of things to come.”
The 67-year-old man decided to walk home and called his girlfriend to tell her: “The strangest thing happened. I had all the symptoms of a heart attack. I was really worried.” “And she said, ‘Oh, baby, is there anything you’d like to do and I can do?'”
He told her he wanted to go to Bob’s Big Boy, where he had chili spaghetti and iced tea.
“Yeah, after I had a heart attack.”
Carrie promised her girlfriend that she would call the doctor in the morning.
“The next day was my first day back and I was doing a big special, like a stunt show, so there were a lot of people there,” he continued. “And when I got there, I was like, ‘Hello, hello, how was your summer? How are you doing?'” And I didn’t call the doctor, I rehearsed and felt like I was OK. ”
However, when the rehearsal ended, he felt his chest tighten again.
“And I said, ‘Oh, I’ll be right back. Let me go to the trailer,'” he said. “‘Let me go to the trailer and get a doctor.’ And then I went to the trailer and I was trying to get up the stairs to the trailer, and I really thought, ‘Oh, that was terrible.’ And I called the producer. I said, “Hey, we have to call an ambulance.” Looks like he’s having a heart attack. ”
Carey was so worried that she called her friend Sam Simon, the creator of The Simpsons and the creator of The Drew Carey Show, to say goodbye before going to the hospital.
“So Sam came to my trailer and I said, ‘Hey, I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m on my way to the hospital,'” he said. “I just wanted to make sure I touched him before I left because I didn’t know what was going to happen.”
“The Price is Right” host was hospitalized overnight, and doctors inserted a stent during the procedure.
“I left the next day and I was as weak as a kitten,” he recalled, adding that actor Mark Vahanian, who also appeared on the podcast, showed up at his home and they went for a 30-minute walk together for his first workout since the heart attack.
“It’s chili spaghetti after a heart attack,” he added.
Later in the podcast, Carey said that before she started losing weight, she barely touched vegetables.
“I went to a steakhouse, had steak, bread, lots of mashed potatoes, a few beers, then had dessert. And whatever vegetables were there, I left them there.”
Vahanian also introduced Carey to the doctor she still sees today who helped her “turn her weight around.”
“Then I went to a steakhouse, ate steak and vegetables, didn’t order fries, didn’t touch them, didn’t eat much bread, and drank only water all day,” he said. “Well, I don’t even drink. I don’t drink alcohol at all anymore. It’s wild.”
Now, he often eats salad for lunch, and he still thinks, “I love salad. “When I’m eating a salad with things like green beans in it, I think, ‘Oh, 20, 25 years ago, I wouldn’t have done this.'”
According to ABC News, Carey narrowly escaped a severe heart attack in the summer of 2001, but her artery was 95% blocked.
