Name: Dave's Heart Surgery 25th Anniversary | David Letterman
Uploaded: 2025-01-21T16:00:06.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Dave's Heart Surgery 25th Anniversary | David Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-01-21. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Dave's Heart Surgery 25th Anniversary | David Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-01-21. Transcript available.

hi i'm barbara gains this is mary barkley this is dave letterman uh how's it
going
friends friends 25 years ago on january 14 2000
this is amazing this is a big one oh i love this it was uh my uh unscheduled uh
quintuple bypass
surgery yeah 25 years i went in for a thank you i and it had nothing to do with
me it's the
surgeons wayne isom and carl krieger and donna reilly those three people and
lou aaroni by the
way was the one that suggested we do something uh and anyway i had the surgery
went in for a routine
uh examination stress test you had a stress test uh this was after a stress
test they said we'd like
to do the thing where we put the tube up and take some pictures i forget what
it's called is it
laparoscopy arthroscopic i don't know but anyway they put an insert a tv show
camera
well not that big yeah anyway so they uh and i was enjoying it because you're
under the influence
of her said the amnesia oh yeah i like that and they said you know what uh we're
gonna send you from
here you're not going home you're going right to the operating room and i did
of course you know they
get a bunch of uh unpaid interns that do they open you up with the bone saw and
then they just spread
your chest cavity do you hear the saw you're out oh no you're wide awake for
the whole thing
i was i was working the room talking about telling jokes hey what's a ham
sandwich hey take a look at me
um and then they put you on the heart lung machine for 42 minutes your heart is
actually out they
remove it from your cavity they disconnect it snip uh and then these guys work
in the heart lung machine
to keep to keep you alive on a bicycle no they're they're cranking it to keep a
thing they get a
bellows and like that wow and uh in my case as i've said before to generate a
little publicity for
what they were up to they put the heart in a in a pan in a cooling solution and
they had the unpaid
interns run it down to the gift shop with a sign dave letterman's heart yeah
you could take a picture
with the heart take a picture with the heart and it attracted very little
interest well it wasn't enough
pr yeah something so anyway that happened 25 years ago and and look at you now
not even a blink
and i had my uh stress test again the thing is like showroom fresh the surgeon
wayne isom said
i did five because we could uh and some a couple of them were not essential but
they went ahead and
did them anyway and you got the fifth one for free like that's right yeah it
was two for one day
and wayne isom tremendously gifted surgeon missing a thumb uh and when i got he's
i'm in bed and
you don't like that with a surgeon well you think not you don't you don't like
that in the butcher
store you see a guy missing a thumb but it's like if you're one of your senses
you understand it at
the butcher's yeah so if one of your senses is working the rest are heightened
so maybe the nine
fingers that are left are like super fingers what it does what i later learned
in studying is it he's
required to use his teeth so but anyway yeah it was fantastic and so but later
they wouldn't do that
today i don't think they still do open heart surgery it's all done like you
said or i said they can
replace a valve uh or they now i understand they're going through your wallet
hey
i am congratulations thanks very much yeah theoretically i know i flatlined for
about a day and a half
and then five weeks later you were back doing the show six weeks later around
five miles we had had a
fight the night before why do you have to bring up ugly things well it's only
because what was the fight
it was something dumb a bit like booking that you didn't like who was it i
think it was some
pussycat dolls but i'm not sure but anyway because i'm a mature centered person
i said that's it i'm
out of here so oh you quit yeah oh that's great how many times did you quit i
remember one time watching
you pack up your office yeah and i just i think i just laughed because i just
thought she'll be back
tomorrow right so the next day i go to couples therapy with my wife and when i'm
coming out of the office i
see a daily news that says dave letterman is in the hospital oh that's i
remember this so you thought
well first of all it doesn't seem like the pussycat dolls would be the kind of
a group i would say no to
right off the top of my head that i don't know what it was yeah i honestly can't
remember what the fight was i just remember that
that that's great seeing your face on on that and i came into the office and i
went into my into my
office and i get a call from the executive producer uh can you come in here
please and i go in and and
rob said we could just forget about what happened yesterday it was like a seinfeld
episode i was
like yes i want to forget about it dave's sick i was that when you like took
your pictures off the
wall i remember one of those that was a different time i remember that to me
was just like oh man
and it's all it's all my fault but i was highly amused i've hired a third grader
is what i thought
yes other people didn't act like that in the real world people would have said
you know you have to
go home you had quite a few pictures on the walls as i recall yes and i rotated
them too because
that's a normal thing to do with a normal office but anyway what have you done
to celebrate the 25th
walter by the way typically i'm not a big fan of memory lane but i love this i
i could i could take
this all day well yeah because it ends in pie is that why sure with the fact
that it ends in pie but
also that she comes out of couples therapy suggesting oh she seemed like she
had trouble everywhere
every aspect of her life yes it is i have something wrong with me but we know
that anyway walter got
this oh god bless you walter because when you have peach pie do they also carry
sag peanut butter
pete's pie company because you know when you have heart trouble cherry pie well
this you know from the
time i was a kid i've talked about this before my mother a tremendous baker a
lot of people are good
cooks good baking is a science and my mother and the key is not the goo it's
always the crust anybody can
load it up with goo but you gotta have the crust is the telltale yes
congratulations dave oh oh my god
that's good oh my god is this good oh jesus everyone is very happy that you're
well and alive
and thanks for watching and oh it's so good get yourself go buy pete's pies
subscribe and view
and and smash and eat pie wow squeeze the monkey and squeeze the monkey wow is
that good am i the
only one who thinks that's no i think it's really good and did you like it walter
and goodbye all right
wow that stuff is good wow that stuff is good wow that stuff is good wow that
stuff is good oh my god