Celebrity News
30 Rock actor, Dean Winters celebrates life after one year anniversary from dying for 2 minutes
[HMG] – Most Actors need little excuse to throw a party, but 30 Rock alumnus Dean Winters has a beauty — Tomorrow is the first anniversary of his untimely death.
One year ago today, the 45-year old native New Yorker awoke with a fever, but just went back to sleep instead of calling for help. When he woke up again the next day things had changed.
“I was gray,” Dean tells Page Six. “I was afraid to go to St. Vincent’s, so I went to my doctor’s on Central Park West, where I collapsed. I was turning black, and my whole head was swelling up.”
The doctors diagnosed a bacterial infection and called 911. An ambulance raced Dean across town, during which time he officially died for 2¼ minutes somewhere on Fifth Avenue as his heart stopped beating.
Three weeks in the ICU was followed by a month of recovery at his TriBeCa apartment, during which time he contracted gangrene which cost him two toes and half of one thumb.
In the year since, this now remarkably fit-looking actor has spent 95 days in the hospital, enduring ten operations, including multiple skin grafts and a procedure where a muscle from his forearm was used to rebuild his right hand.
But work soon came back. Once he was fit and mobile again, Tina Fey gave him a role as ‘Dennis Duffy’ on 30 Rock.
“For the season finale, I had casts on both arms, and another on my foot. And Tina literally had me propped up on a stool.”
An ad campaign for ‘All State’ soon followed, in which Dean plays ‘Mr. Mayhem.’ But there are drawbacks to surviving such trauma: Dean starred in the pilot of ABC’s ‘Happy Town.’ But by the time he recovered, Stephen Weber had been given his role.
“People in LA think I’m dead,” Dean now says with a smirk.
The one upside in all this is that Dean has gained a new perspective on life;
“I feel like I’m a member of a very exclusive club — with a very tight door policy,” he confessed. It’s gonna take more than a finger and a couple of toes to keep me down.”
I was just surfing around and encountered this article. That is very, very frightening. Was a formal diagnosis made? It sounds to me like Ludwig’s Angina, or it’s old-fashioned name of “trenchmoth,” which was resssponsible for deaths of some soldiers during WW2. There are a lot of salivary and other lymph glands under the chin and behind facial structures which are only too happy to spread the infection.I haven’t seen anyone with it profesionally, but personally, my mum had it in 1987 and was critically ill. You need about 4 antibiotics at once and in frequent, massive doses to get the upper hand on the infection. You could develop peri- or endocarditis. Brrrr. Glad you made it, Dean. Mucho rest is necessary after that. Change your toothbrush at least every 3 months. And always brush before bedtime.
Boy I love spellchecker and simple proofreading!