Lewis blocks pain for busy tour

Friday, April 19, 2002 | 8:53 a.m.

For the first time in 37 years, Jerry Lewis says he is free of pain.

"I've been reborn," said the 75-year-old comedian, and to prove it he took a few brisk steps down the hallway of his Las Vegas home.

On April 8 Lewis underwent surgery at a Houston hospital to implant a relatively new device that electronically blocks pain.

The Synergy Neurostimulation System, made by Medtronics of Minneapolis, Minn., was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1999. It consists of a battery-powered pulse generator, which is implanted under the skin in the lower abdomen.

Two wires are connected to the generator and to the spinal cord. Using a hand-held device, similar to a remote control, Lewis is able to adjust the level of the electric impulses that block the pain.

"And I can open my garage door," Lewis said.

Two weeks earlier Lewis was not in such jovial spirits and he could not glide so effortlessly down a hallway. Seventy years of pratfalls had left him in around-the-clock pain and his movements were measured.

Between 1965 and 1978 he was addicted to Percodan, a pain killer. After conquering the addiction he lived with the pain.

But the excruciating pain became even worse 11 months ago when Lewis was stricken with pulmonary pneumonia, his left lung collapsed and he was put on a regimen of 28 pills a day -- including Prednisone.

Prednisone, said Lewis, has a tendency to seek out the areas of the body that are in pain and to magnify the pain almost beyond the point of being able to stand.

"I thought I wasn't going to make it," Lewis said. "Three months ago I sat there so depressed I did not think I was going to make it."

Internationally acclaimed heart surgeon Dr. Michael Debakey, Lewis' close friend for almost 40 years, suggested the pain-blocking device.

"He says to try a temporary one first," Lewis said.

The temporary device is not implanted. Kept outside the body, it is used to determine if a patient can benefit from the permanent implant.

After four days of being pain free with the temporary pain-blocker, Lewis flew to Houston for the surgery.

Debakey didn't perform the operation, but he was at Lewis' side throughout the three-hour procedure.

"I went in at 7 o'clock Monday morning and at 12:30 in the afternoon I was walking down the hall with Michael," Lewis said.

With seemingly renewed energy, Lewis has attacked a dozen or more projects with renewed vigor. In February he had said he was going to embark on a concert tour in May, but recovery from his lung ailment was slower than anticipated.

But now a pain-free Lewis says he is ready to hit the road July 15 to give concerts at The Orleans, Madison Square Garden in New York and at venues in Paris and Berlin.

And there are five films he is working on that are in various stages of production.

"I have three sets of writers coming from three different pictures Friday (today)," Lewis said.

And there's the memoirs he is writing about the years he was partners with Dean Martin. He has written more than 600 pages and expects it to reach about 1,800 pages by the time he is finished in December.

"Then they'll probably cut it back to 600 pages," Lewis said.

He calls the writing process "cathartic."

"We had such a wonderful life together," he said. "The bad feelings came after the split, and that was because neither of us were in control of our emotions because we were so angry at one another for allowing this to happen."

Lewis said that even though he and Martin didn't speak for 20 years, they were still emotionally close.

"The love I have for him is the same I have for Danny (Lewis' 9-year-old daughter)," he said, "and you can't love any more than that."