A Comeback Role

I pushed off from ten thousand feet down a ski slope in Park City, Utah, and began my last run of the day. My wife, Karla, and our two kids were waiting at the bottom for me. It was great to be spending so much time with them. In a month I'd be directing television shows and teaching again. A congenital heart defect had ended my days of being a lead film actor 13 years earlier, but now my career was more rewarding than ever. Life was sweet.

I settled into a rhythm on my skis. In the distance, I could see a stand of powdery white aspen trees framed by the setting sun. Ever since I was a kid growing up in a New York City apartment overlooking the Hudson River, there'd been few things that soothed my soul like a fantastic view. I inhaled deeply and took in the scene before me. Suddenly that scene got fuzzy. I felt woozy, as if I were going to pass out. It seemed like I might lose control of my skis.

Oh, no, this is it, I thought. The moment I'd been dreading.

I made it safely to the bottom. Karla rushed up to greet me. "Wow, you were really flying. What's up, speed racer?"

I just smiled and wrapped my arm around her. I knew exactly what had happened on the mountain, but I didn't want to tell Karla. Not yet. I suspected that the bovine heart valve that had kept me alive since my heart defect was diagnosed in the early eighties had torn. Now I would need another major operation, during which my heart would be stopped. I'd be kept alive only by a heart-lung machine while the valve was replaced, just as the doctors had warned me it would someday need to be.

Funny, I hadn't dreaded the first operation this way. I'd even laughed at the irony—the former teen heartthrob with a bad heart. I was only 28 then, married to Karla for just two years, with a one-year-old daughter, Lyric. A lifelong jock, I'd made my name playing athletic boy-next-door types in movies such as One on One, Running Brave and Ice Castles. Just a year earlier I'd finished the New York City Marathon in less than three hours.

But I started getting so short of breath I couldn't lift my daughter. I was diagnosed as having been born with a bicuspid (two-leaflet) heart valve instead of a normal tricuspid (three-leaflet) valve. My overworked aortic valve had worn away over the years and my heart had swollen to nearly twice its normal size.

"You always say I have the biggest heart of anyone you know," I'd joked to Karla. I guess I was young enough to still think I was invincible. Doctors told me if I got a mechanical replacement valve, I'd need to be on blood thinners for the rest of my life, which meant no more sports because of the risk of internal bleeding. The other option was receiving a valve made from cadaver, pig or cow tissue, but the tissues would eventually calcify and I'd need a new valve about 10 years down the line.