I'm Not Dead... Yet! (42 page)

Ablation

A successful ablation was performed at Cedars Sinai Hospital by Dr. Eli Gang. It fixed the tachycardia, but that’s all it fixed. I still couldn’t breathe.

I could fake it beautifully on set. No one had a clue. But sometimes I found myself in the most absurd situations. One evening after everyone left and I was on the set trying to figure out how to change a scene from a train station to an airport (physically!)—a scene we were shooting the following morning, in less than 12 hours. I saw one of the producers of the show going to his car, which was about a quarter of a mile away, in a parking structure (he was late coming onto the show, so he didn’t have the prize possession of having a parking space with his name on it in front of the stage, like all the other producers).

I asked him if he understood what this change would do to our day and if he had a way to get in touch with the scenic designer because a train station was not going to change into an airport by itself. The dialogue could change, but the actors would be talking about airplanes at a train station.

His infamous words, the words I never want to hear, the words of someone who is not invested in the ‘whole’—the words that to me are a
sin were
:
“I don’t care”
he said flatly and kept walking toward his car.
Indifference!

“You don’t care?” I laughed, surely thinking he was kidding. If there is one thing that should bond all of us, it’s our passion to make the best show possible, even if our personalities were like oil and water. And—I fought depression, err, ennuis, by
caring
.

“I said, I don’t care,” he repeated.

“Of course
you care
,” I said like an idiot savant, following him to his car. Yet, with each stride, I became more of the idiot and ‘savant’ was deleted from this conversation’s dictionary.

“I-do-not-care!” he said, again.

This absurd dialogue between the two of us continued for a quarter of a mile until it finally got through my thick idiot-skull that he did not care! How could that be? If he didn’t care, why was I still on the lot and not at home with my family? Wait, I thought—where was everyone else who should be here to make this set-change work? Were they home with their families? I started to do my own private investigation into the ‘I Don’t Care’ contagion. Was my passion the remedy? Actually, many who made more than a million dollars a season had the ‘I Don’t Care’ syndrome. Pharmaceutical Companies could be making a fortune with Restless I Don’t Care Disorder: R-I-D-C-D. Symptom: ‘If you have
indifference
lasting more than three hours, please see Robby Benson and he’ll smack you upside the head.’

I once told a young writer/producer who I felt badly for (because the star of the show hated him and made it very public), “I wouldn’t have your job for a million dollars!”

He laughed and said, “A million? Ha! Neither would I!” He made $3 million bucks a year—and he didn’t care, either!

It was an epidemic and I looked like a fool for ‘giving too much effort’ while all the other shows in town were barely rehearsing.
I would still approach the work as if I were Sisyphus with a lobotomy—why do anything unless you’re going to do it the best you can?

“Robby must need more time because he sucks.” I need more time, because nothing is funny and we’re supposed to make people laugh! Where is my echo chamber plug-in, under the heading of: REVERB Grand Canyon?

All of the passion that went into every decision I made—all of the compassion I had for every worker on every show, in front and behind the camera—was being mocked by the ‘I Don’t Care‘ people. The ‘I Don’t Care’ Syndrome was finally identified as a condition, not a disease. It was a cult, and for the life of me, I must have burned my secret ‘I Don’t Care’ draft card when I took a job.

I had a ‘passion valve’ that could not be turned off—it was connected to another set of valves that were impossible for me to calibrate. Those ‘valves’ were set to nuclear when I believed that people just didn’t give a damn—they just wanted their paychecks. How could we not care? Being given the opportunity to speak to millions of viewers during a 22-minute sitcom was a gift. In the show business I had been schooled in,
indifference
(along with petty and clever cynicism) is a foe that I no longer had the energy to conquer.

I went back to my ‘cardiologist to the stars’
and explained to him that I was in trouble because
I just couldn’t breathe,
and it was so bad that I couldn’t work! That had to mean something because it meant everything to me! I stood there and begged him for answers as to why I could not breathe. He looked at me, shrugged his shoulders and then ordered a
ton
of tests. Like it was his way of proving me wrong, the tests were endless.

When we hadn’t heard anything for weeks, Karla called and asked for a follow-up appointment. We drove back to his posh Beverly Hills’ office. When I was told to go to a room, I went, sat there and waited.

The ‘cardiologist to the stars’ came in smiling and immediately the phone rang. There was a medical emergency in a plastic surgeons office upstairs—in the same building. A patient up a few flight of stairs, had gone into
cardiac arrest
. My doctor did not go upstairs. My doctor did not send other doctors on his staff to go upstairs; my doctor even took his time with the phone call—there was no urgency from my doctor whatsoever; I was… absolutely mortified by my doctor’s behavior. There was a human being in cardiac arrest just a few flights above the office we were in. There was even an emergency crash cart in the office we were in!

My cardiologist (to the stars) dispassionately told the frantic nurse on the other end of the phone,
“Call 9-1-1.”
He hung up and sat down next to me, placing his hand on my knee.

“Robby,” he said, patting my knee as he spoke, “I know what it must be like to be in your
position
in show business.”

“Um… why aren’t you going upstairs to help the person in cardiac arrest?” I asked bluntly and sincerely.

“I know it looks bad, but if I even ‘make an appearance’ on that floor—if the elevator takes me there accidentally, I could be liable in a law suit. I can’t deal with that. It could be a very expensive elevator ride.”

(To this day, as I am typing this book, I cannot help but wonder, what happened to the person who went into cardiac arrest and my doctor refused to get in an elevator because of the fear of malpractice.)

Then, he continued with me, as I was sitting next to him, my mouth wide open, like I was in an oral fly-catching contest.

“The stress. The constant stress. I see this every single day with celebrities and executives in your business. So a part of me understands why someone like you might turn to drugs and alcohol.”

“What?” I was flabbergasted… Is it possible to be even
more
flabbergasted? Yes. If flabber were a flammable gas, I was pure Hindenburg-gasted! Oh, the humanity! Karla fell off her chair. Maybe the chair fell off Karla. This was a
Twilight Zone
moment for the two of us.

Okay, calm down, I thought. Listen to the expert who is allowing someone to die a few floors above us.

He patted me on the leg again and I looked at my file that he was holding, which looked like an over-sized encyclopedia because of my 2 open-heart surgeries and all of the recent test results he had ordered. But he never opened my file.

“‘Drug use causes symptoms,” he said, seriously. “
These people
shouldn’t kill themselves, Robby.
These people
should save themselves.”

I tried to speak clearly but it was hard to get enough of a breath to say: I’m not ‘these people.’ I have had two open-heart surgeries and I really can’t breathe. I may be a weirdo to you, but I don’t do drugs—never did drugs and will never do drugs. And if I were you doctor, instead of accusing me of recreational drug use, I’d get my ass upstairs and help the person who went into cardiac arrest.”

“Calm down, Robby. You are far too self-righteous. Get your ‘problems’ under control and come see me in a year. Let’s see how your ‘shortness of breath’ is doing then.”

We left his office stunned; morally disoriented. (A very L.A. feeling.)

I felt shame, a sense of hopelessness,
and I completely lacked a sense of joy. Why?

It’s easy now to sit back and speculate but these were very trying times… (easy for me to write about now, but then—then I was a lost soul).

In my own stuttering way, I finally admitted to Karla, “I’m feeling a bit… blue.”

“Depressed?” Karla asked.

“I wouldn’t say the “D” word. I’d just say that I’m filled with… ennui.”

“Ennui? All the time?” she sweetly inquired.

“Yeah. Pretty much,” I answered. I always told Karla everything. Eventually.

“Well,” Karla said, “how bad is your …ennui?”

“Pretty bad ennui,” I admitted. “As ennuis go, yup, pretty bad. Yup, ennui’s bad.”

“Bad enough to say that you’re depressed?”

“Me? Depressed? Absolutely not.”

“Robby—do you ever think of… hurting yourself?” Karla could not have been more thoughtful, more compassionate and gentle.

“Um… yeah. I can say I’ve thought about hurting myself… a few times.”

“What do you mean by a few times?”

“You know… like every day.” I looked down. I was so ashamed; I couldn’t look her in the eyes. “Sometimes when I go to bed, I hope I don’t wake up…”

“So, Robby—you’re depressed.”

“No, I wouldn’t exactly use that word.”

“Well,” she said, “if I called it ‘feeling like crap’ instead of using the word ‘depressed’ would you say you ‘felt like crap?’”

“Oh, definitely. I feel like crap, big time crap. I’m just
not
depressed.”

During my first open-heart surgery, I mentioned that Joan Rivers was there because her husband had heart surgery. Later, her dear husband committed suicide. I heard he was depressed.

I never understood (then) how someone could suffer from depression after a team of doctors, surgeons and nurses who trained their entire lives to fix our hearts, gave us a new lease on life. Elation, I understood. Depression, no. Suicide? Never.

Until that day. The day I confessed to Karla how I… how
dark
I was feeling. (It’s a “D” word…)

Karla began her own quest for someone to help me. She called my ‘cardiologist to the stars’ and mentioned that she had heard about ‘Cardiac Depression’ and it possibly being an effect of time on the heart-lung machine. Knowing how result-oriented I am she didn’t want to waste my time (Woody Allen’s 50 plus years in therapy came to mind) with just any psychiatrist and wondered if he could recommend someone who specialized in Cardiac Depression. He said he had ‘no idea whatsoever,’ and that ‘you should call your family physician for a referral.’ Thank you, ‘cardiologist to the stars.’

Cardiac Depression can strike patients for many reasons but some people think it may have something to do with the heart-lung machine and how long a patient is on it. Others believe it has something to do with the fact that your chest is sawed open and some stranger holds your heart in his or her hands. There are doctors at the Cleveland Clinic who deal specifically with cardiac depression.. I met one of the doctors, Leo Pozuelo, M.D. and he helped Karla and me immensely. He pursues answers aggressively—all for the good of the patient and the patient’s family.

Cardiac depression can be more of a hurdle than healing physically from open-heart surgery. One of the more obvious reasons that I believe I suffered from cardiac depression was because I was young and athletic. For my first surgery, the healing and my energy to bounce back was turned into an Olympic event (by me). But for the second open-heart surgery, a surgery that didn’t seem to be working (I just
could not
breathe), I suddenly felt as if I were less of a man. I could not do all of the things I thought I’d still be able to do. What kind of
husband
was I? Karla certainly didn’t sign up for this. What kind of
father
was I? ‘Come on, Daddy, let’s do something.’ ‘I’m sorry son, but I feel too tired to even get up, let alone play catch.’ (I felt such
shame
. Shame, shame, shame...)

I don’t believe in ever being ‘the victim.’ But creatively, as far as my jobs went, I suddenly found myself in situations where I would be tiring when normally I’d be the only one with energy who could continue to work. Not anymore. That too caused serious self-doubt, which lead to depression. I found myself in bed on weekends instead of studying my scripts, I was holding a pillow to my chest, weeping for no reason. And I was humiliated that Karla and my children might see me like this. They made sure the house was quiet so ‘Daddy could rest.’ Unbelievable. They were so understanding.

Confronting depression may help others in your family; friends and people who love you. The spouses, partners, family members and dear friends, go through hell, trying to ‘be there for you.’ I found that discussing my emotions (whatever they may be)