“I didn’t see the white light or anything like that,” the 84-year-old actor said of his brush with death. “There’s nothing there.”
Al Pacino revealed on a podcast over the weekend that he almost died during a bout with Covid-19 — a near-death experience that left him pondering his mortality.
Pacino, 84, was plugging his memoir, “Sonny Boy.” on The New York Times’ podcast “The Interview” when he recounted how in 2020 he fell sick at his home from Covid and the situation quickly became dicey.
Pacino said that he had a fever and was dehydrated with a faint pulse and that he lost consciousness.
Back in January, in the hospital, my heart stopped for 8 seconds. I was asleep, I had no idea. I woke up and was fiddling on my phone, nurse comes in:
“Were you asleep about an hour ago?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Your heart stopped for 8 seconds.”
“Um… thank you? I don’t know how to respond to that…”
I have a heart monitor connected to my phone now, continuously monitoring. It’s stopped a few more times since then, 4 seconds here, 5 seconds there. Doc says not to worry about it, no cause for a pacemaker yet.
So, like a whole hour goes by before they check on a person who’s heart stopped? That would be in my review for said, “hospital”.
In fairness, it did re-start on it’s own before they could do anything.
But that was my question…
“None of the monitors went off… well, I don’t THINK they went off…”
“Oh, yeah, they went off at the nurses station…”
Apparently “pauses” like that aren’t uncommon for folks who just had their 2nd heart attack. Since then I’ve had shorter ones in the 4-5 second range. All when I’ve been asleep.
Doc says it’s not concerning unless it happens when I’m awake and the only thing I’ve had like that is either skipped beats or extra beats, which I gotta say, feels super fucking weird. I have passed out or nearly passed out a couple of times just trying to walk down a hallway.
All that being said, yeah, we go out of our way to avoid that hospital now.