Husband May Have Saved Lucy’s Life
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Lucille Ball’s husband may have saved her life by rushing her to the hospital in time for emergency heart surgery, a spokesman for Cedars-Sinai Medical Center said Friday.
“A lot of things worked in her favor, starting off with (her husband’s) reaction. . . . He got her here,” spokesman Ron Wise said.
Ball, 77, the star of television’s “I Love Lucy,” was driven to the Los Angeles hospital Tuesday by husband Gary Morton after she complained of crippling chest pains.
Doctors operated immediately to replace parts of her aorta, the heart’s main artery, which had begun to tear apart all the way to her stomach.
“She went through one of the most serious kinds of cardiac episodes,” Wise said. “A majority of people (with a dissected aorta) don’t even make it to hospital, and a significant number don’t make it through surgery.”
“It was a very close call for her,” he said.
Ball’s condition was upgraded from critical to serious Thursday, when she was well enough to get out of bed and sit in a chair.
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