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Channing
greets us from the second floor of her home in Los Feliz
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One
early afternoon last week we went over to Los Feliz to
visit an old friend Channing Chase, an actress
who lives with her husband Dan Saxon in a
beautiful hillside house built in the early 1930s in a style
known out here known as Monterey Colonial.
Many years ago, in another incarnation, when I had
dreams (illusions really) of being an actor, Channing and I were
partners in auditioning for agents. We never succeeded in getting
me an agent and I eventually got the message (give it up) but Channing
stuck with it and did very well.
In New York she built a very prosperous career for herself especially
making television commercials (and lots of dough) playing a character
she jokingly liked to refer to as “Mrs. Know,” hawking
anything and everything you might buy in a supermarket.
By that time I’d moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career as
a writer. In my enthusiasm for the place, I encouraged my friend
to come out to Los Angeles to look for work. Eventually with enough
prodding and goading, with more than a hundred commercials to supply
residuals for income, Channing made the leap and moved into an extra
bedroom in a house I shared with a couple of friends on Doheny Drive.
It was there on Good Friday morning in
1982 about ten o’clock that Channing dropped
dead on the kitchen floor.
I was in my bedroom on the first floor of the house making my bed
when I heard Channing come downstairs and go into the kitchen. A
few moments later hearing what sounded like a glass jar fall onto
floor of the kitchen, I made a smartass remark about my friend’s
klutziness, loud enough for her to hear.
Since she always picked up on such remarks with repartee, I was surprised
to hear no response. Then it occurred to me that perhaps she had
returned to her room upstairs, and that one of the dogs had knocked
the bottle out of kitchen wastebasket. So I went to have a look.
There on the narrow galley-kitchen floor, in front of the sink, lay
Channing in a heap, as if she’d fallen knees first.
I thought it was some kind of joke. Don’t ask me why; but it
was the only explanation my mind could come up with.
So I made a joke about it. But again no response. Her hands, I noticed,
were splayed out, palms up; clearly not a “planned” fall.
Alarmed, confused, I spoke to her. No response. Now at her side,
I could see the skin color around her nostrils and lips had turned
a purplish blue.
Was this what “turning blue” was? I lifted her arm. It
was limp. I repeated her name louder and louder. Nothing.
I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to leave, leave the room,
the house, to flee, to run away. Instead I called a housemate, Sara
Romilly, who was working for a producer down on Sunset.
Sensible, stable, she would know what to do.
She didn’t. “Call the paramedics and I’ll be right
home,” she said.
I looked at the clock, the minutes ticking by. I dialed “operator.”
The operator came on the line. I said, now in a state of alarm, “A
woman has just collapsed on my kitchen floor and I don’t know
what to do.”
She asked for my address. Within seconds she connected me to paramedics.
A man’s voice came on. I repeated the phrase: A woman has
just collapsed on my floor and I don’t know what to do!!
What was she doing? he asked.
Preparing some breakfast.
Did she aspirate on her food?
I don’t know.
Put your fingers in her mouth; see if you can feel anything.
I hate this stuff. I’m squeamish. I still wanted to run away.
But I did as I was told. Nothing there, as far as I could tell.
Does she have a heartbeat?
I put my ear to her heart. I couldn’t tell; I couldn’t
tell!
Does she have a pulse?
I put my fingertips near where I’d been taught the pulse was.
I couldn’t tell. Now I was scared. “I don’t know,
I don’t know, I can’t tell."
You’re panicking; stop it, the voice
at the other end of the line said.
Okay okay.
Do you know how to give CPR?
No!
DON’T PANIC! He stated hard and clear.
The CPR. Lay her out flat on the floor. Lift her head slightly
by the back of her neck, letting her head rest backward, and put
your mouth over her mouth and breathe in ...
Okay. Now, with both hands press down on her chest.
Okay. Now hold her head up again by the back of the neck, put your
mouth on hers and breath in ...
Okay ... Now the chest ... Keep repeating those
steps; you are giving her artificial respiration.
Okay ... We are on our way.
Don’t leave me, I said to the man on the phone.
Within moments I could hear the sirens coming up the
hill. Sara Romilly arrived having dashed home. The sirens grew closer
and closer.
Eight or ten firemen, arrived. Two trucks and a car. I got out of
their way to let them into the tiny kitchen. Standing in the hallway
I heard one say to another: “it’s a total arrest.”
“ A total arrest;” I was too dumfounded to know what that meant.
Two of them picked the lifeless Channing up by arms and the feet,
like a sack of potatoes, and moved her into the dining room where
there was more space.
As the men opened their kits and cases, brought in their equipment,
oxygen, masks, with what looked like an oversized pair of shears,
they cut open her pullover, all the while firing questions at me.
Was she on drugs? No.
Drinking? No.
What was she eating? I don’t know. She ever do drugs? No.
You sure? I was sure.
There were so many around her, I stood in the doorway to stay out
of their way, listening to their exchanges as they attempted to revive
her.
Having failed with the oxygen, they took out what looked like two
large rubberized paddles (called electronic paddles, I later learned)
placing one on each side of her upper torso.
With these they were attempting to jolt her into a heartbeat. I could
tell that she wasn’t responding. Wasn’t responding, wasn’t
responding. But they kept at it.
I knew now that she had expired, was dead. I
was thinking about things like out-of-body experiences
that we hear so much about, wondering if she were indeed
in that state, still in the room, floating above in
the ether; and thinking that if she were: “Come
back Channing,” I said under my breath, over
and over, “come back Channing, come back Channing
...”
When suddenly, one of the firemen said aloud: “She’s
coming back!”
The energy in the room was fiercely focused by these men who really
are heroic members of our community, working totally as a unit with
selfless certainty, with speed, with precision and efficiency, and
with what I can only describe as care and sincerity, far more than
I had experienced within myself before their arrival.
“She’s coming back, she’s coming back ...” another man
repeated, and suddenly the mood in the room changed to a quiet exhilaration.
Within minutes, Channing was breathing again, although
unconscious. Out of the house went two of them. In
they returned with the stretcher. Now with an oxygen
mask covering her nose and mouth, they removed her.
One of the men, dressed in an officer’s uniform and cap said
to me, “you saved her life.”
I had no idea what he was talking about; I done nothing but panic
and then follow some authority’s instructions.
“What was it happened to her?” I asked.
He said he didn’t know.
“ Will she be all right?” I asked.
“ Usually it’s one of three things: they don’t survive or if
they do, they remain a vegetable or in a coma for the rest of their lives. She
was gone for close to ten minutes; there’s usually damage to the brain
because of lack of oxygen.”
All I could hear was the “don’t survive, coma or vegetable
for the rest of her life ..."
Within minutes, the men were gone, along with the unconscious Channing
who was taken to Cedars-Sinai.
Die, coma, vegetable.
“But this woman is a very determined person,” I said to the fireman.
"Couldn’t that make a difference.”
He wasn’t optimistic. “I’ve seen too many of these,” he
said.
Two weeks before this incident, my other housemate,
a man named Kenyon Kramer and I had watched Barbara
Walters interview Joan Collins on television.
We’d really only tuned in because Kenyon had been working on
a project that involved Collins. In the course of the interview,
Collins told a story about one of her daughters who had been in a
terrible car accident, had come close to death and ended up in the
hospital in a coma.
Collins related that the doctors had told her and her husband at
the time, Ron Kass, that the child would either
die, or be a vegetable or remain in a coma for the rest of her life.
Unwilling to accept the doctors’ prognosis, Collins and Kass
decided to stay by their daughter’s bedside and talk to her
and stroke her until she came out of the coma.
No one around WAS hopeful except Collins and Kass but
they stuck with it. Within days, the girl emerged from her coma and,
according to Collins in her interview with Barbara Walters, the girl
had survived completely and is a functioning, healthy human being
today.
Thinking of that, I asked the officer if we could visit Channing
in the intensive care unit. He said we could, asking us to give them
a couple of hours to get her checked in and set up.
When Kenyon returned from his office we went down to the hospital.
Once she was set up in her cubicle, all wired and plugged in to the
life support systems, Kenyon and I stood on either side of Channing,
holding her hand, while I did most of the talking.
She and I had taken a class a few years
before called Silva Mind Control which
taught a process of meditative relaxation, and involved
instructing oneself to relax by concentrating on one
part of the body at a time – the top of the head,
the forehead, eyes, eyelids, mouth, jaw, neck, shoulders,
etc.
So with that in mind, I began the process on Channing, talking to
her unconscious self, identifying myself, Kenyon identifying himself,
and then quietly instructing her, exhorting her, to concentrate and
relax each part of herself where I placed my palms.
Doctors and nurses came by, as we began this process. They were curious
and not discouraging although quick to add that they had “seen
many of these cases, and . ... Die, coma, vegetable.
“But this is a very determined woman,” I always interjected,
hoping that would bring a light of optimism from the professionals. Not really.
About eight o’clock that night, one of the nurses came by and
suggested that we go home and get some rest, adding that Channing
needed to rest also (“even people in a coma need to rest”).
We both went home that night physically exhausted by the five or
six hours we’d spent at Channing’s side in the CICU.
The following morning, for the sake of efficiency we decided to take
shifts by her bedside.
When I arrived at the CICU about nine, the nurse told me they’d
had to anchor her down during the night.
Why?
Because she was thrashing and flailing, the nurse replied, adding, “that
means she’s fighting,” and she gave a sly wink.
I knew it, I knew it. I went back to work at her side. Same thing.
Relaxation exercises. Channing, this is David, I’m by your
side, this is my left hand on your forehead, relax your forehead;
all very quietly and deliberately, consistently, persistently, over
and over.
By late morning, her eyes were open, darting
around unseeing, although she remained
comatose. And she was moving, trying to move, more
and more, struggling under her bondage. And as I implored
her to relax, occasionally she, the body as it were,
would stop the struggling, and quiet down. I knew we
were getting somewhere.
About two o’clock, Kenyon showed up for his shift. After telling
him about the progress we’d made, I left the hospital.
By that time, my own body was burning with the sensation of a million
pinpricks covering me from head to toe, a sensation I’d never
experienced before (or after). When I got back to the house, I put
on my bathing suit and went into the pool, hoping to relieve myself
of this odd tension. No such luck. Out of the pool, unrelieved, I
lay on the lounge hoping to relax myself into sleep.
About an hour later the phone rang. It was Kenyon, his voice quaking,
but with exuberance. He blurted it all out. While at Channing’s
bedside, working his healing hands and voice, a nurse came in to
change the bedclothes. Kenyon stayed to assist her to continue talking
to Channing in her open-eyed yet comatose state.
“Channing,” he said to the nurse in keeping his monologue with the
patient, “has beautiful green eyes ...”
And just then the body on the bed suddenly said in a loud, awkward,
tongue-tied sound, said: “greeeee—nnn-eyesssss."
“ Beautiful green eyes,” Kenyon repeated, astounded, the nurse astounded
...
Again, the voice, “Greee-nnn-eyessss.”
Within twenty-four hours, on Easter Sunday, Channing
was removed from the CICU to a regular hospital room. I went to see
the following day. She was quiet but conscious. Her mind and memory
were coming back slowly, reminding me of a computer bank turning
on. She had no memory of the incident and for the first few days
believed herself to be in Connecticut where I had a house that she
often visited before I moved to California.
A neurologist told us that patients who have traumatic episodes often
have no memory of the experience and even mentally remove themselves
physically from the environment where it occurred. This turned out
to be true for Channing. |
Two
weeks after entering Cedars, she checked out of
the hospital. Her sister Lorna had flown in from the East and
took Channing back to New Hampshire where their parents lived,
for recuperation.
In August, almost four months later, Channing returned to Los Angeles.
When I picked her up at LAX, she was her beaming self, looking very
rested, obviously, and anxious to get on with her life.
Back in Los Angeles she underwent a thorough examination by the doctor
who had taken her case that Friday at Cedars. Given a clean bill
of health, he told her it was the first time in his career that he
had ever written “Sudden Death Syndrome” on a live patient’s
chart.
It seems that on the morning of her fatal collapse, Channing was
suffering from a grippe, with diarrhea, as well as her monthly menstruation.
Because of those circumstances, when she came downstairs to make
herself some breakfast, she had naturally eliminated all the minerals
in her system. One of them, potassium, is needed to make the electrolytes
that charge the heart. Without that potassium, her heart just stopped
beating. Had she eaten just a banana, she would have provided herself
the nourishment to keep that heartbeat. But she hadn’t, and
had she not knocked over the glass bottle that fell to the floor
with her, she would never have had another heartbeat again.
Determined
as usual, after her full recovery (no detectable
incidents to the brain — we could joke that that was what
came from my being so full of hot air) she stayed in Los Angeles
and resumed her work. A few years later (now my memory fails) she
met and married Dan Saxon, a former advertising executive who manages
talent and has an art gallery in Los Angeles.
Industrious and determined, Channing has an actor’s resume
that covers pages with its credits on film, on television, on commercials
(she’s appearing currently commercials for Paulix and Triple
A; recently on Detrol), and plays (most recently in the Pacific Resident
Theatre’s West Coast production of Edward Albee’s “A
Delicate Balance.”)
She has no memory of the incident/episode of twenty-one years ago.
I’ve recounted it to her dozens of times, and it continues
to amaze her, although because she is by nature self-reliant and
responsible in her life she does seem to be slightly embarrassed
by the fact that something went totally awry. And as far as the out-of-body
experience, we always hear so much about, she didn’t have one.
She just came back to be with us. |
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