Name: Kelsey Grammer's Near-Death Experience | Letterman
Uploaded: 2024-01-30T23:04:22.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Kelsey Grammer's Near-Death Experience | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-01-30. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Kelsey Grammer's Near-Death Experience | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-01-30. Transcript available.

our first guest is a uh listen to this five-time emmy award winner starring in
a brand new television
series entitled hank and it premieres tomorrow night at eight on another
network
please welcome back kelsey grammar well you look you look great and it occurs
to me i don't think
i've seen you in uh gosh probably two years has been years yeah yeah something
close good to have
you with us and i remember hearing in that period of time where there was some
concern some health
issue but you look great now i had a heart attack yes yes is that right and i
feel good yeah yeah
had an actual heart attack it was an actual heart attack wouldn't it tell me
about that was because
i think this is what a lot of people and rightly so fear yeah well we share a
certain heart thing yes
we have a bond of the heart bond yeah that nice um yeah i um i started out one
morning in hawaii we
went for a long paddle you know you know the stand-up paddle stuff you guys
have seen that oh on like a
surfboard surfboard you're paddling around so we did that for a few hours and
then i i i picked up a big
stone at the the bottom of the ocean about 20 feet deep and walked around with
that for a while
why why were you why were you doing that exactly apparently that's not good for
your heart no
even if you're healthy there's no point in doing that somebody pointed that out
yeah i'm not allowed to
go below like 10 feet anymore but uh um and then uh we we got back from the
paddle and honestly i i
sort of hit the beach i didn't feel so good and uh in what sense didn't you
feel well i i felt sort
of sweaty sweaty and um shortness shortness of breath shortness of breath and
uh then i was uh
gonna gonna go up and have some breakfast then i felt faint and then i was i
was lying down
in this little sort of palapa there in hawaii i mean it's a serious situation
but you know i mean
i'm a guy of humor you know so i'm at the time did it where you you weren't amused
by it at the time
no clearly i was actually just i kept saying to myself uh that i wanted to see
my children
and uh that was the big thing and that i had so much to make up to my wife for
just one of those things now wait a minute again you're laughing at all you
know in those moments
these you know these things come with a great clarity yeah and uh but those are
the important
things of life that's what turns out to be important yeah so so then what
happened you're
not feeling well so we all we end up they my wife actually looked at me and
said i was just going
like ah i was trying to breathe uh because you know they teach us to breathe
when we go to acting
school i don't know so so wait a minute so your wife rushes you to acting
school and she finally
leans over this is about 45 minutes into it and she says are you having chest
pains now at that time
actually it felt like an elephant had taken two feet or whatever those things
are and torn my chest in
half so uh i said yes yeah so these you had all the classic symptoms really the
pressure on the chest
so she shouted she shouted and said he's having a heart attack they called for
the emergency guys
they got there about an hour later and are you kidding me no it takes a while
in hawaii uh just a
travel tip uh anyway it's just for those of you with heart conditions man
but i'm so i go to the hospital and when we get to the hospital they look at me
and said you're
having you have a blood clot something's happened to you or one of your dis you're
descending something
is clogged and you're just showing signs of that and they said uh we can give
you this shot
they call it the clot buster i said okay they said there are side effects so
what are those death
wow
what do you do for heaven's sake i said give me the shot really really
and right after apparently let me is is it a small percentage or is it like 50
50 what are we talking
about um i i think actually most of the time they bring people back from the
clot buster honestly but
my own percentage is what what i had uh apparently 15 of the people survived
that so you were in a
minority of survival as i was oh my lucky boy and just as they gave me the shot
i said to my little
angels i said okay look i uh i don't want to see any light
i don't want to see anything beautiful or cool i'm not yeah i'm not prepared i'm
not interested
just keep it you know keep it really uninteresting and let me get through this
and my wife tells me
that right at that moment as they jabbed me with the the thing the heart stops
i code and then uh
just before that she said i i looked over and i said i'm going now
wow this is creepy this is very creepy but um
but but the the heart buster drug actually is used in that situation to save
lives at the at the
moment of the heart attack or as close to it as possible right yeah and and so
your heart actually
does stop i guess that's one of the side effects as well they stop the heart
and and
then they restarted immediately and then they try to you know pop it again and
get right and you
came right back reset i came back on the second one yeah so so now the risk has
been minimized
significantly that things are pretty good i ended up getting a stent by this
real uh
talented doctor in oahu they flew me to oahu later now if you have a heart
attack in oahu
actually things are pretty good there so there's this doctor named lee gertler
he's a real hot i
can't say that other word but he's really really really hot hot you know uh a
hot um um excrement
i mean and honestly isn't that all what we're looking we're looking for
we're all looking for that this is fascinating uh to me and i i think to other
people because
heart disease is still i believe the number one killer in the world as far as
disease and ailments
uh okay so they put in a stent which is one of those deals where they open up
the the artery yeah
they go up the artery and then and actually when i got in when i did the first
exploratory thing went up
through the leg and then uh said well you know you don't have a lot of uh uh
build up or anything in
your arteries a lot of plaques so uh in fact we wouldn't have done anything
except that you had
this this event and he said i'm going to put a stent in and or i should put a
stand and he said 50 50
you'll be okay if we don't put one in he said but if you if you put one in it's
a hundred percent that
you'll won't have this problem again can't argue with i said so 100 sounds a
lot better than 50 50. so
go ahead dr gertler put that in there you hot excrement you
is this a term of endearment now it is yeah sure okay i'm gonna call my kids
tonight yeah
set them to bed with you little excrements you
all right so now the stent takes care of everything that seems to take care of
everything now diet and
stuff like that but then then i had another little episode uh the following
summer when i was in the
hamptons and uh i had to go back in for observation and it turns out that i
when i sleep i have a very
low heart rate so they did some testing and uh they took me into this electro
cardio guy and uh they
did a little test where they shock your heart and try to induce infarction or
whatever and uh
they put the little pads on me you know to do the shocking thing and and i said
excuse me
excuse me why are these on me what's what's going on i said well we're going to
stop your heart and
then that's how we'll start it again so ho ho ho ho yeah may i please speak
with the doctor yeah
because uh i didn't expect to be stopping the heart anymore i thought that was
kind of over right
and then he explained to me that that's how they do it all the time so they did
they did that and they
put it again they put it in your heart has started and stopped more than a crosstown
bus for god's sake
crazy so then he uh they they told me that they found that i was easily induced
and so they said
it's uh recommended that you get um a pacemaker oh pacemaker so they and it paces
me at 50 uh 50
beats per minute and now are these two problems of the heart uh unrelated or
did one cause another
or are they just coincidental don't really know they may just be coincidentally
wow but now i've
got my little box and it's it's a it's a wonder of science what what does the
uh uh pacemaker do
exactly well it uh it will shock me if my heart does something strange and it
will also is this
it is this what we're also pace me and it's the eye pacemaker they're doing all
kinds of amazing things
do you mind if we listen to your heart no i'd love to and it's the pacemaker is
working right
now or absolutely right now can you get it you know i'm a musical buff so
wow that's remarkable that's fantastic
and now i want to i want to tell you something here after that story uh it's it's
harrowing uh but it's
also uh they can do so much in this area now in terms of uh heart and arteries
that the people
listening to this should be encouraged and and certainly encouraged by seeing
you but take a look
at this picture you think this guy isn't tough and ready to go and can handle
this look at them
right right there he is ladies and gentlemen
nice going well we didn't really talk about anything else so i will mention
that the show
hank oh yes hank uh premieres tomorrow if he lives long enough
uh it'll be tomorrow night at uh 8 p.m over there on the would it kill you to
come and
be on this network i'd love to be less than i talk about it okay we'll see if
you can make that
happen or we'll stop your heart again i i couldn't be happier for you
congratulations give my best to
your family i shall kelsey grammar ladies gentlemen