Call Me Lumpy: My Leave It to Beaver Days and Other Wild Hollywood Life (43 page)

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Authors: Frank Bank,Gibu Twyman

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BOOK: Call Me Lumpy: My Leave It to Beaver Days and Other Wild Hollywood Life

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Page 214

I went out in the garage and I called and I said, "Pick up the phone."

She picks up the phone.

I said, "OK, can you hear me?"

I said, "I'm gonna talk to you on the way down to the hospital and you'll see that I'm OK."

I said, "Beck. I can't hit anything. There ain't anything on the road at 11 o'clock on Sunday night in Kansas City.

I said, "I couldn't even hit a jackrabbit."

I'm drivin' down the street and I say, "OK, I'm passin' by the funeral home (maybe I shouldn't have mentioned that one). All right, passing by HyVee. OK, I'm passing by Barstow School. All right, here I am, I can see the hospital down here on the right. I'm turnin' on Carondelet Drive . . ."

I turn down the street. I see the ambulance entrance to the emergency room. Big red neon sign.

"Emergency Entrance."

There isn't a car in sight. There's nothing around this Emergency Entrance.

It's a big portecochere. I'm driving a big Chrysler LHS.

But I look in there and it says, "Emergency Parking Only."

And it says, "Other Parking for the Emergency Room" with an arrow to the right.

That was about a block and a half down.

I said, "You know what, some guy could be comin' in here hurt or something like that."

So I just turned and drove down a block and a half and parked the car.

I was wearing shorts and a T-shirt. I had my driver's license and my insurance card with me, and that was it.

I finally come walkin' into the ambulance entrance. And this guy looks at me and he goes, "You havin' chest pains?'

I said, "No. But I'm feelin' a little warmth up here in my chest."

And he just looked at me. He got like scared. He jumped up from behind the counter. He ran around and grabbed a wheelchair.

He looped around behind me and scooped me up in the wheelchair.

Now he starts running with meand then he hits the wall just as these doors were gonna fly open. He gets straightened out and whooshes through the doors.

Somethin' out of "ER."

And the next thing I know, these two dudes grab me. And they pick me up and put me on this gurney, sittin' up.

So now I'm flyin' down the hall.

In about two seconds there's about four or five people workin' on me. They're puttin' all the pipes on me and checkin' my blood pressure and all

Page 215

this stuff.

I'm trying to say to these guys, "I just want something to take away this heat."

And they put me on the EKG.

Then I see this one guy, who looks very Jewish, wearing a white coat and carrying a clipboard. I figured he must be the doctor.

He looks at me and he says, "Mr. Bank. Calm down."

And I said, "Calm down? This guy's just stuck me. I'm just here to get something because I've got some indigestion here."

He looked straight at me and he said, "Mr. Bank. We're trying to save your life. You're having a massive heart attack."

I said, "I'm what?"

I said, "Get real."

I still didn't really believe I was having anything except indigestion.

So then this other guy puts this needle in my arm. He goes, "Blood sugar, 430."

I go, "Get the hell out of here."

I said it a little worse than that.

I said, "My blood sugar isn't probably more than 120 or 130 right now.

I said, "Do it again."

He does it again.

He goes, "460."

I said, "Get rid of this guy. He doesn't know . . ."

He interrupts me: "Mr. Bank. You're blood sugar is 460. It goes crazy when you're having a heart attack. Now shut up. I'm trying to save your life."

Now he's hangin' this bottle of stuff on my arm. Puts a needle in my arm. And there's this little bottle.

And he says, "Mr. Bank, that bottle costs $2,800. I'm trying to save your life with that."

It was called TPA.

Guess what's goin' through my mind.

"Am I gonna die?"

Nah.

"Am I in pain?"

Nah.

"Am I goin' through any fear?"

Nah.

What's goin' through my mind?

"I'm here for 10 minutes and I betcha my bill here's gonna be five grand."

That's what was goin' through my mind.

You gotta love it, huh?

Page 216

I must really be sick . . . in the head, not the heart. Right?

But I was beside myself.

I felt like such a pigeon that they were really gonna clean my clock with the bill.

Well, the next thing I know, here come my cousins Tom and Deanna, along with Becka.

The doctor has called them at my house.

And Becka's sittin' there lookin' like a drowned rat. She's got tears in her eyes.

Tom and Deanna ain't lookin' like they just got done watchin' a Charlie Chaplin movie, either.

And Becka comes over to me and puts her arms around me.

I just looked at her and said, "Beek. Don't sweat it. Nothin's gonna happen here.

"I'm tellin' ya."

And she starts cryin', "I don't want to lose you." And "ta-da-tada-ta-da."

And I said, "I'm not goin' anywhere. There's no way I'm havin' a heart attack. Screw them."

I said, "But I'm feelin' a little bit better."

Needless to say, I was probably so stoned on the drugs they'd given me by then, I didn't know where the heck I was.

Next thing I know, they've got me upstairs in intensive care and Becka's with me. She says, "I'll be back in a couple hours, about 8 o'clock in the morning."

By this time I'm hooked up to all kinds of wires. This was all goin' on till about 4 or 5 in the morning.

So at 8, she says, "The kids are coming."

I said, "What do you mean, the kids are coming?"

"Well, I had to tell the girls," she said.

I went, "Yeah, but Julie's in Boston. Kelly's in San Francisco. Michelle is in Madison, Wisconsin. And Joanne is in Riverside County in California."

She said, "The kids are all coming."

"They are very upset."

So she tells me later the doctors had said, "You better get your family together."

So apparently they thought it was more than I did.

And I guess they knew and I guess it was.

So they got me stabilized. And I had a pretty positive attitude. Because I wasn't goin' anywhere. I knew that.

I don't know why.

Something just told me.

This was not my time.

Page 217

I was too stupid to have any fear of death.

I wasn't afraid.

I was ignorant.

You know what?

Sometimes it pays to be ignorant.

So the worst part of this whole deal, now it's 8 o'clock at night and they got me all doped up, with pipes comin' out of mein comes Julie and Kelly.

You have to understand something. My kids can be a little on the emotional side.

They lean over my bed and the tears start falling onto my face.

And you know what? I'm feelin' guilty as hell now. I'm goin', "Hey, you guys, what are you cryin' about? I'm here. It's over with. I'm fine. Look at me. I'm great.

"C'mon, let's go to the ballgame. C'mon, we'll go out to Stroud's. Or let's go over to Arthur Bryant's and get some ribs."

I mean, unfortunately, that's what got me there to begin with, but you know . . .

Anyhow, the doc comes in and he says they want to do this angiogram thing where they run a line up your coronary arteries, inject some dye and take a "picture" of your heart.

But they have to get me stabilized and they can't do it until Thursday. This is Monday night by now.

They said because of the heart attack, my heart had swollen and they wanted to give it a chance to go down a little bit.

By now, Michelle shows up from Wisconsin.

And she brings me this really cool cheesehead.

Cheesehead?

Well, if you follow the Green Bay Packers, you already know.

If you don't, I'll explain.

It's a big yellow plastic triangle that looks like a piece of swiss cheese, with a hole in the bottom so you can wear it like a hat.

Which the crazy loons who root for Green Bay do, en masse, each Sunday.

It's tacky to the max, and it's completely cool.

I really dug this cheesehead, because I was rootin' hard for the Packers by then.

Because I had this really good bet on them to win the Super Bowl at 8-to-1.

I had put a little bit of money for the Chiefs to win at 25-to-1. That was sentimental money. The real money I had put on the Packers at 8-to-1.

Everybody else was goin', "It's the Cowboys and the 49ers before the season began," but I said, "Nope. It's the Packers this time."

I thought they'd improved just enough to beat 'em and the Cowboys were getting self-destructive and I knew the 49ers were over the hill.

Page 218

So I was in Vegas and I'd put this bet down on the Packers.

It wasn't huge. But about 150 bucks at 8-to-1. Hey, that was great.

So now I got my cheesehead on.

And now they start takin' me for tests the next couple of days. And, you know, they won't let you walk to the tests. So this dude comes in with the wheelchair.

And wherever I went in the hospital, I had my cheesehead on.

I didn't go anywhere without my cheesehead.

One guy says, "Wouldn't you like to leave that here? You'll be back in a few minutes."

I said, "I don't leave home without my cheesehead or my American Express Card."

So they didn't say anything more to me.

So now, I got to do this angiogram thing.

And I keep hearing the doctor going, "Tsk-tsk-tsk-tsk."

And I said, "Now, wait a minute. I don't ever like to hear anyone say, 'Whoops,' or 'tsk-tsk-tsk' in a doctor's office.

"Tsk-tsk-tsk is one of the two words or noises you don't wanna hear."

So now I'm layin' on the gurney here, and I'm lookin' at my heart on a television set. I'm layin' down, and they've got this dye in me and all this stuff.

So the doctor comes over and sticks his face in my face while I'm layin' on the gurneyfreezin' my tush off, I might add, because it was really cold in there.

And he says, "Look, Mr. Bank, here's your main artery. It's 95 percent blocked."

And I went, "Uh-huh."

And he goes, "And here's this other artery. It's totally disintegrated."

And I went, "Wow."

And I could actually see . . . I mean, this artery was shot, man. It looked like detour down a bad road.

He sticks this thing up and he goes, "Then there's this other artery. You've got about an 80 percent blockage in this one."

He keeps goin' and finally, I said, "I get your point."

I said, "All right, what's the story?"

I said, "Am I gonna buy the farm or can you fix me?"

He goes, "Well . . ."

And I go, "Oh, the bypass."

And he goes, "Yep."