'Price Is Right' host Drew Carey recalls ignoring heart attack signs due to a cartoon stereotype
Drew Carey is known across the country as the fun-loving host of 'The Price Is Right,' but the 67-year-old has had his own share of health problems in the past. Carey recently shared a rather terrifying story of how he ignored some classic heart attack signs when he was younger, and even suffered the consequences shortly afterward. The reason for his not taking the symptoms seriously at the time was cartoons.
Back in 2001, Carey was a part of The Drew Carey Show, when he put on some weight. However, since he was supposed to be at a taping soon, he had to get back in shape, and that is when he took to jogging. While jogging, he felt the classic heart attack symptoms, including a tightness in the chest and a numbness in the shoulder. “I was really overweight, and we were supposed to come back to taping,” he said as per a report in TV Insider. “So, I had a little chest heart monitor and whatever. And I was jogging down my street, and my heart rate went up to like 160 or something like that, like really crazy, and I was like, ‘Oh.’ And I felt, like, numb in my shoulder." He also mentioned how he initially dismissed the warning signs, saying, “But I thought if you had a heart attack, you would go ugh and fall down like in a cartoon. I thought that’s what happened when you had a heart attack.”
Once the sensations went away, Carey resumed jogging and even went out to eat chili spaghetti at a restaurant with his girlfriend. However, it did not take long for the consequences of his actions to catch up with him. He went to tape the next day, and while everything was fine through rehearsals, things took a turn for the worse once those got over, as he felt that tightness in his chest once again.
That is when he decided to call an ambulance. “I went to step up the stairs to my trailer, I really went like, ‘Oh boy, that was rough.’ And I got on the phone with the producer,” he recalled. “I said, ‘Hey, you have to call the ambulance. I think I’m having a heart attack.’ So, Sam came over to my trailer, and I go, ‘Hey man, I don’t know what’s happening, but I’m on my way to the hospital.’ I just wanted to make sure I touched him before I went off because I didn’t know what was going to happen.”
Carey then ended up spending the night in a medical facility, where he underwent a procedure called coronary angioplasty, which opens up clogged blood vessels of the heart. “I left the next day, and I was just like weak as a kitten,” the popular game show host added.
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