“I didn’t see the white light or anything like that,” the 84-year-old actor said of his brush with death. “There’s nothing there.”

Al Pacino revealed on a podcast over the weekend that he almost died during a bout with Covid-19 — a near-death experience that left him pondering his mortality.

Pacino, 84, was plugging his memoir, “Sonny Boy.” on The New York Times’ podcast “The Interview” when he recounted how in 2020 he fell sick at his home from Covid and the situation quickly became dicey.

Pacino said that he had a fever and was dehydrated with a faint pulse and that he lost consciousness.

  • Drusas
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    832 months ago

    If people like him had shared these sort of stories more in the early days, it might have helped more Americans to take it seriously.

    • @InverseParallax@lemmy.world
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      532 months ago

      Wouldn’t have mattered.

      People wanted to believe what they wanted to believe, religion isn’t restricted to the organized ones, we have impromptu cults everywhere as well.

    • MudMan
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      272 months ago

      Plenty of them did. That ship sailed the moment the issue got politicized. As with everything else, once it’s about taking sides in the current environment, no amount of reality will make a dent.

    • Ghostalmedia
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      122 months ago

      People straight up knew people their age that died, and STILL didn’t get vaccinated.

      • It is hilarious because people were “really dying” of “other things” when the virus destroyed kidneys they “really died of kidney failure.” When it ravaged and stopped the heart it was really “heart disease.” Lungs, pneumonia. But definitely not the virus.

        People are fucking stupid and we deserve whatever happens to us.

        • TipRing
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          22 months ago

          People who died of COVID usually didn’t die with COVID. People who are looking for a reason to blame anything but the virus for deaths point at that distinction as though it is somehow meaningful.

  • Flying Squid
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    392 months ago

    He almost died. It was near-death. Even he said so. But that wasn’t good enough for NBC News. They had to say he “briefly died.”

    He didn’t. You don’t come back from death.

    • @CatZoomies@lemmy.world
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      242 months ago

      You don’t come back from death? Oh yeah?! Then explain Pokémon The First Movie: Mewtwo Strikes Back!

      Mew and Mewtwo are fighting and Ash jumps in between them because he doesn’t want them to fight. They kill him and bro falls to the ground and turns to stone. Then Pikachu tries to wake him up with slaps and thunder shocks, but fails to wake him up as Pikachu breaks out into tears. All the other Pokémon witnessing this start crying over Ash’s courageous sacrifice and Pikachu’s loss, that their tears fly away or whatever, and those tears flow into Ash’s body. He then turns back to flesh and he’s like, “Yo I’m alive and that hurt, but I’m alright.”

    • @corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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      92 months ago

      You don’t come back from death.

      If you’ve seen Narcan work, you’d change your mind.

      And, very rarely, hospital trauma patients have been brought back from what’s defined as death, to life. But the timing, the on-hand staff and equipment has to be varied, be many, and be relevant. And also a lotta luck.

      • Flying Squid
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        12 months ago

        Defined as death by whom? What are their criteria for this definition?

          • Flying Squid
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            32 months ago

            Are you defining death as ‘none of your cells are alive?’

            I suppose some people would consider Henrietta Lacks to be alive, but I wouldn’t.

            Otherwise, I don’t understand the point of your question. It’s neither a definition nor a list of criteria. But I would not be surprised if some human cells lived for a while after going through a wood chipper.

  • @jordanlund@lemmy.world
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    332 months ago

    Back in January, in the hospital, my heart stopped for 8 seconds. I was asleep, I had no idea. I woke up and was fiddling on my phone, nurse comes in:

    “Were you asleep about an hour ago?”

    “Yeah, why?”

    “Your heart stopped for 8 seconds.”

    “Um… thank you? I don’t know how to respond to that…”

    I have a heart monitor connected to my phone now, continuously monitoring. It’s stopped a few more times since then, 4 seconds here, 5 seconds there. Doc says not to worry about it, no cause for a pacemaker yet.

    • @leauxhigh@lemmy.world
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      122 months ago

      So, like a whole hour goes by before they check on a person who’s heart stopped? That would be in my review for said, “hospital”.

      • @jordanlund@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        In fairness, it did re-start on it’s own before they could do anything.

        But that was my question…

        “None of the monitors went off… well, I don’t THINK they went off…”

        “Oh, yeah, they went off at the nurses station…”

        Apparently “pauses” like that aren’t uncommon for folks who just had their 2nd heart attack. Since then I’ve had shorter ones in the 4-5 second range. All when I’ve been asleep.

        Doc says it’s not concerning unless it happens when I’m awake and the only thing I’ve had like that is either skipped beats or extra beats, which I gotta say, feels super fucking weird. I have passed out or nearly passed out a couple of times just trying to walk down a hallway.

        All that being said, yeah, we go out of our way to avoid that hospital now.

  • @seathru@lemmy.sdf.org
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    -252 months ago

    “Look. I know your loved ones died… And that’s tragic. But listen about how hard it was for me to suffer through in the comfort of my own home surrounded by some of the best medical staff money could buy.”

    • @NABDad@lemmy.world
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      72 months ago

      Who took a shit in your cornflakes?

      Pacino is allowed to discuss his experiences, particularly since so many people are interested. It’s not like he broke into your house and forced you to listen. Someone asked him to talk, someone wrote about it, and we read it.