Jerry Lewis is one of our greatest comedians and a star of radio, television, stage and film as well as a film producer, screenwriter and film director. At age 20, he and Dean Martin formed the famous comedy team of Martin and Lewis. Today at age 89, he is a survivor of a lifetime of serious medical conditions that had to be treated with medications and procedures that had many side effects. He is probably best known for his fund-raising efforts for muscular dystrophy. For nearly 60 years he hosted telethons that raised more than $2.6 billion dollars for research on this devastating group of diseases.
A Show Business Career that Began at Age Five
His real name was Joseph Levitch and he was born in 1926 in Newark, New Jersey, to Russian Jewish parents. His father was a vaudeville entertainer and his mother was a piano player for a radio station. He started performing at age five with his parents in the Catskill resorts in upstate New York. He dropped out of Irvington High School in the tenth grade.
In the late 1940s, he and Dean Martin formed a team called Martin and Lewis. Martin sang while Lewis primarily made everyone laugh. A year after they formed a team, they were earning $30,000.00 a week at the Copacabana. He was married twice: first at age 18 to Patti Palmer, a former singer with Ted Fio Rito; and last at age 56 to SanDee Pitnick, a 32-year-old Las Vegas dancer.
His Medical History
Back pain: At age 39, he fell off a piano during a performance at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas and broke bones in his spine that left him partially paralyzed with constant pain. For the next 13 years, he was able to perform only after taking Percodan, a potent painkiller. He says that he took up to 13 pills a day. Virtually all people who take Percodan opiates for an extended period get very sick when they try to stop taking it. In October 1978, he started bleeding from his nose, mouth, and ears. His friend, heart-surgeon Michael DeBakey, treated Lewis for an ulcer and had him hospitalized for 10 days to get him off the Percodan. When Lewis returned home, he says he dumped 2,000 pills in the toilet has never taken Percodan since then. He suffered severe back pain all the time. In 1997, at age 71, he had spinal surgery which helped temporarily. The pain returned and in April 2002, at age 76, he had a three-hour operation for the permanent installation of a remote-controlled device called a Medtronic “Synergy” neurostimulator. The procedure was a success and stopped his back pain.
Heart Attacks: In 1960, at age 34, he suffered his first heart attack while filming Cinderfella. In December 1982, at age 56, he was pronounced clinically dead from his second heart attack, but recovered. In September 2001, he was unable to appear at the London Palladium because he had to be rushed to the hospital for a heart problem. On June 11, 2006, at age 80, on a cross-country airline flight, he suffered a third heart attack. He had two stents placed in the arteries leading to his heart and was back on stage in a few weeks. However, stents are foreign bodies that increase risk for clots and strokes, so he will probably take anti-clotting medication, such as aspirin, for the rest of his life.
Diabetes: In 1986, at age 60, he was diagnosed with diabetes. He had many lifestyle risk factors for diabetes, including
• overweight,
• smoking,
• an unhealthful diet with too much sugar-added drinks and foods and too much red meat,
• not getting enough sleep, and
• not exercising.
Prostate cancer: 1992, at age 66, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Diabetes increases risk for prostate cancer.
Meningitis: In 1999, at age 73, he had to abandon an Australian tour because he had viral meningitis. Diabetes impairs a person’s immunity to increase risk for infections anywhere in the body.
Pulmonary Fibrosis: In May 2001, the time of his third heart attack, he was so short of breath that he turned blue. He was diagnosed with pneumonia caused by a serious chronic lung disease called pulmonary fibrosis and his family was told that he had only a ten percent chance of surviving. He was terrified. His partner, Dean Martin, had died of lung failure in 1995 at age 78. He and Dean were both heavy smokers. You can’t smoke five packs a day of cigarettes and get away with it. Smoking cigarettes increases risk for heart attacks and severe lung scarring. Jerry’s lungs were so badly damaged that to save his life, his doctors were forced to treat him with prednisone that:
• caused him to gain more than 50 pounds,
• shot his blood sugar levels up which aggravated his diabetes,
• caused depression and thoughts of suicide, and
• caused osteoporosis that made his back pain even worse than it was before the prednisone.
He had to be hospitalized to get him off prednisone so he could return to work.
What You Should Learn from this Medical History
• Do not smoke, do not live with smokers, and do not live in a house that was formerly inhabited by smokers. See Third-hand Smoke
• Try to exercise every day.
• Eat a healthful diet with plenty fruits and vegetables. Restrict sugar-added drinks and foods, red meat and fried foods.
• Do not become overweight.
• If you need to take medication that causes weight gain, such as prednisone, work to return to your healthful weight as soon as possible.
• If you must take strong pain medication, work with your doctor or a pain management specialist to minimize the dosage and try non-addicting alternatives.
Dr. Gabe Mirkin is a Villager. Learn more at www.drmirkin.com