On Assignment to interview actor Stacy Keach for a sidebar article to accompany my cover story on brain and spine surgery for the University of Southern California's Keck Medicine magazine. Keach suffered a stroke in 2009 and was treated at USC hospitals.
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The Show Goes On For Actor Stacy Keach
By Nikolas Charles
Winter 2010
The theatre is unforgiving. No one can yell “cut” to do another take, just as in life itself. On Thursday, March 12, 2009, opening night at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles, actor Stacy Keach, had trouble remembering his lines. The truth is, he could have been having a stroke right onstage.
Keach, best known for his 1980s television drama “Mike Hammer,” was in the middle of a 20-city tour playing the role of Richard Nixon in the production of “Frost/Nixon.” He felt foggy and light-headed. A few days earlier, he had felt tingling sensations in his right arm during a performance in Cincinnati.
“It went away, but then it came back the following day,” says Keach of the symptoms he had experienced in Ohio. “I had no idea what it was. I thought maybe it had something to do with my circulation.”
On opening night in L.A., Keach felt similar symptoms. After visiting his general practitioner, he was told that it could have been a pinched nerve in his neck. He felt relieved with that report and went on to perform five shows between Friday and Sunday of the opening weekend. Although the tingling sensations persisted in his right arm and he still felt lightheaded, he thought the symptoms would dissipate on their own.
After a cast party at his home on Monday, his symptoms escalated. “Tuesday morning I woke up and it felt like somebody had poured liquid nitrogen into my veins. I had absolutely no motor response in my right arm,” he recalls. “I told my wife this is serious; we better call an ambulance.”
Keach went to a local hospital, where an MRI revealed that he had experienced a series of minor strokes due to significant narrowing (stenosis) in his left carotid artery. He was referred to Donald Larsen, M.D., associate professor of clinical neurological surgery and radiology at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.
The same day, Keach came to USC, where he was immediately examined. After an extensive series of tests, Larsen treated Keach’s stenosis with angioplasty and stenting – opening the artery with a balloon-tipped catheter and inserting a wire mesh tube to keep it open.
“The procedure went off swimmingly,” Keach says. “I am very pleased and grateful. I was out of the hospital on Sunday, and the following Friday I returned to my role in ‘Frost/Nixon.’ I invited Dr. Larsen to see the performance the following night. Knowing he was in the audience, I made a slight change to the script.
“In a late night phone call to Frost, Nixon says his physician, ‘Dr. Lundgren,’ made him change his diet from cheeseburgers to pineapple and cottage cheese. I substituted Dr. Larsen’s name on that evening, as a personal tribute. Given the circumstances,” Keach says, “I doubt that the playwright, Peter Morgan, would have objected.”