"The Price is Right" host Drew Carey told a podcast audience this week that common misconceptions about heart attacks nearly cost him his life in 2001. He didn't clutch his chest and collapse. So he figured he was fine.
He wasn't fine. An artery was 95% blocked.
Carey, now 67, shared the story on Ted Danson's podcast "Where Everybody Knows Your Name." The comedian described jogging near his home during a break from taping "The Drew Carey Show." His heart rate spiked. His shoulder went numb. He recognized the textbook symptoms, and dismissed them anyway.
Carey told Danson he had been "really overweight" and started jogging to shed pounds before returning to the show. During one run, his heart monitor jumped to roughly 160 beats per minute. He slowed down. It dropped to about 80. He started again. It shot right back up.
He knew the warning signs. He just expected the wrong kind of emergency.
As the New York Post has reported, Carey's doctor later warned him bluntly that his life would be shorter if he didn't change course. But in the summer of 2001, Carey hadn't received that wake-up call yet. He was still operating on a myth.
"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."
That belief, shaped by Hollywood dramatizations and pop culture, led him to shrug off numbness, a racing pulse, and chest tightness. Instead of calling a doctor, he called his girlfriend.
Carey's next move was Bob's Big Boy. He ordered chili spaghetti and an iced tea. His girlfriend asked if there was anything she could do for him. He ate his meal and went to bed.
The next morning, he showed up for the first day of taping, a big stunt show with a crowd of people. He skipped the doctor again. He did rehearsal. He felt okay.
Then his chest tightened.
Carey described heading to his trailer and struggling to climb the stairs. That's when the denial broke. He called a producer with a simple message:
"Hey, you have to call the ambulance. I think I'm having a heart attack."
Before the ambulance arrived, Carey called Sam Simon, the man who helped develop "The Simpsons" and was also working on Carey's show. Simon came to the trailer. Carey said he wanted to see his friend one more time because he "didn't know what was going to happen."
Carey spent the night in the hospital. His doctor inserted a stent during a procedure. ABC News reported at the time that Carey narrowly escaped a massive heart attack that summer, with an artery 95% blocked.
He left the hospital the next day feeling, in his words, "weak as a kitten."
The experience forced a reckoning with his diet and habits. Carey described the old routine:
"I would go to a steak place and have the steak, the bread, the loaded mashed potatoes, a couple beers and then a dessert. And whatever vegetable was there, I would just leave it there."
After the heart attack, everything changed:
Carey told the New York Post he eventually lost about 80 pounds after adding 45-minute cardio workouts several times a week. He said he no longer has type 2 diabetes. His doctor's warning was blunt: "If you don't do something, your life's going to be shorter, and you'll have these bad things to look forward to."
Carey's story isn't political. But it carries a principle conservatives understand: personal responsibility saves lives. No government program jogged down that street for him. No bureaucrat changed his diet. He faced facts, made hard choices, and lived to tell the story on a podcast two decades later.
His friend Marc Vahanian showed up at his house after the hospital stay. They walked for 30 minutes, Carey's first post-heart attack workout. Vahanian also introduced him to the doctor he still sees today.
That's how recovery works. Family, friends, and the will to change, not excuses, not denial.
Heart attacks don't look like cartoons. And second chances don't come with a third.
