A game show host didn't realize he was having a heart attack until it was almost too late. Drew Carey, host of the popular game show The Price is Right, faced his own mortality in the early 2000s. He's now reflecting back on it.
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"I was really overweight, and we were supposed to come back to taping," Carey told Ted Danson on his podcast, "Where Everybody Knows Your Name," Wednesday. He was trying to lose weight. "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 said he began experiencing "all the things that I read were heart attack symptoms, 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."
Game Show Host Has Heart Attack
Instead of going to the hospital, he went to Bob's Big Boy and ate chili spaghetti. He promised his girlfriend he would call the doctor the next day. But instead, he went to work.
"The next day was the first day back, and we were doing a big special, like stunt show. And so there's a bunch of people there," he continued. "And when I got there it was all, 'Hello, hello, how was your summer? How've you been?' And I didn't call the doctor, and I did rehearsal and I felt OK."
That's when the game show host realized that he was having a heart attack.
"And I went, 'Oh, I'll be right back. Let me go to my trailer," he said. "'Let me go to the trailer and call the doctor.' And I went to the trailer, and when 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 to the producer. I said, 'Hey, you have to call the ambulance. I think I'm having a heart attack.'"
Carey called his good friend and told him goodbye in case he didn't make it.
"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,'" he said. "I just wanted to make sure I touched him before I went off because I didn't know what was going to happen."
Fortunately for Carey and game show fans, doctors put a stent into his heart. In the years since, he started practicing a healthier living.
