Comedy Is the Source of Pain for Jerry

[Guest guest]

Comedy Is the Source of Pain for Jerry

1 hour, 39 minutes ago

By Adam Marcus

HealthScoutNews Reporter

WEDNESDAY, Nov. 13 (HealthScoutNews) -- Jerry may be 76, but his firm

grip still sits on your hand long after the shaking. He is a genial host in

his suite at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City, where he has been staying

" since I could afford it " and where he has come to discuss the plight of

sick people without a champion.

They're not children with muscular dystrophy, a cause made his own in

1948 and for which he's raised $1.8 billion. Although won't discuss

why he adopted " Jerry's Kids " as his philanthropic mission -- he says it's

the only secret he's ever kept -- he talks freely about his interest in

chronic pain. While he can't speak personally about the debility of muscular

dystrophy, counts himself among the 70 million Americans who wake up

every morning and go to bed each night in pain.

A map of any conversation with resembles an airline route chart: all

red lines inevitably return to the hub that is his 10-year-old adopted

daughter, le. It was Dani, he says, who saved his life at the moment

two years ago when he was about to end it.

Tapped out physically and emotionally, thought he was alone in his Las

Vegas house when he sat in the bathroom at arm's length from his revolver.

But Dani walked in, surprising him. " She looked up at me and said, 'No,

Daddy, no,' " the entertainer says.

Pain was the wage paid for his success in show business, a Faustian

bargain with the comedy gods that made him rich and famous beyond belief.

His brand of humor is pure goonery, borne of the recognition that the body

is as funny as the tongue. spent much of his celebrated 16-film

partnership with Dean crawling up from breakfalls of corrugated

cardboard, only to plunge gleefully back if the sight gag worked. He has

tumbled from cars and off two-story buildings, on the promise that audiences

will love him for the trouble.

" When you get a laugh, go for it, " says.

The falls continued after he and split, and the list of injuries

mounted -- he has broken both legs, both arms, both shoulder blades, and

sundry other bones at least once.

The worst happened on March 20, 1965. was playing the Sands in Las

Vegas, closing out a show whose finale was an elaborate fall from a piano.

To impress his orchestra, did " the best double flip of my life "

directly onto a metal microphone connector. " I thought I was paralyzed, " he

recalls. He was rushed to the hospital, where doctors told him he'd nearly

severed the end of his spine.

says the pain was all but intolerable, except when he was on stage.

" It's the adrenaline, " he says.

However, adrenaline can do only so much, and the curtain eventually falls.

Over the years, became a Percodan addict. He started on low doses, but

ultimately, he says, he still ached even after a dozen pills a day. At the

nadir of his habit, while in London for a command performance for Queen

II (news - web sites), he found himself in Soho buying 10 tablets

of the stuff for $200 a pop. " I was a doper of the first rate, " he says.

In May 2001, was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis, scarring of the

tissue separating the lungs' air sacs. Doctors put him on the steroid

prednisone, which helps him breathe but left him 50 pounds heavier and

ballooned his waist from a trim 33 inches to 51 inches. " I looked like a Jew

sumo wrestler, " he says.

By Labor Day that year, he felt so ill he had to sit through the annual

Muscular Dystrophy Association telethon, and his uneasy puffball visage

prompted an outpouring of concerned letters from viewers. One woman even

added $75 to her yearly contribution earmarked specially for his care.

In April of this year, one of ' doctors suggested that he consider

trying the electronic neurostimulator. After a four-day dress rehearsal in

which he was pain-free, had the device implanted permanently.

is easily excitable, especially when the topic under discussion is

himself, his family, or himself. He curses with the fluency of a street

hustler. He was born in Newark, N.J., which " looked like Beirut " the last

time he visited there, he says with a trace of regret.

As he talks, he coughs into his fist, an effect of the lung disease.

Now, brought back from the unthinkable by filial admonition, is never

out of reach of another device, one he also credits with saving his life. It

is a red remote control about the size of a cell phone.

When he brings it to his side and pushes a button, an electric stimulator

embedded in his abdomen floods his spine with low-voltage current. These

pulses prevent pain impulses from reaching the brain and muzzle the

otherwise crippling discomfort.

The device, called an electrical neurostimulator, is made by Medtronic and

is now used by roughly 110,000 Americans. Medtronic hired as the

headliner for its " Tame the Pain " campaign to raise awareness of the problem

of chronic pain and its treatments. The American Pain Foundation and the

National Society for Chronic Pain are also involved in the effort.

" There's hope, there's help, there are answers for people with chronic

pain, " says Helen Dearman, founder of the National Society for Chronic Pain,

a Houston-based nonprofit. Dearman has been dealing with daily pain since

1975, when she fell four stories onto her back. She says patients need to

know they " have to seek the right for care. Lots of people do not realize

that they can see a pain management specialist. "

Dearman wears a different sort of implant from ', this one an opiate

pump that doses her spinal cord with painkiller when she needs it. Both

Dearman and stress that implants aren't for everyone, and that many

people in chronic discomfort do well on much less aggressive treatments such

as muscle relaxants and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs.

When Medtronic approached him about becoming a spokesman for the " Tame the

Pain " campaign, quickly agreed. " I can't stand the thought that there

are 70 million people suffering with chronic pain, " he says. is

getting paid for his time, though he says all the money is going into a

corporation he established for his daughter.

views his celebrity as a kind of planetary law, and he has a point.

His efforts on behalf of Jerry's Kids have earned him a Nobel Peace Prize

nomination, he says, and the children he has helped have looked to him as a

" hero. " He is confident that his status as a household name, both as an

entertainer and through his work with MDA, makes him the perfect, the only,

pitchman for pain awareness. So does his frankness. " I don't have a problem

telling people I'm in pain, " he says.

is now well into the rough draft of a two-volume memoir of his time

with , which he considers to be " the greatest love story ever. " He has

five pictures in the works at the moment. His doctors are weaning him off

prednisone, which he hopes will help him shed some weight and leave him

looking less like Orson Welles in his later years.

Finally, after nearly four decades in pain, says he's feeling " 100

percent " better. And that's the message he hopes to convey to others who

suffer: A better life is possible. " We're living in this incredible medical

and technological revolution. You have every reason for hope, " he says.

What To Do

Turn to the American Academy of Pain Management and the National Pain

Foundation to learn more.