MICHAEL Jackson, through the knowledge of specialists familiar with his medical condition:
Propofol, the drug administered by his personal physician and allegedly to have done him in, cannot be given in any non-hospital environment without an anesthesiologist on hand. Only with a doctor certified in advanced cardiac life support can this be injected. The patient’s chin needs immediate elevation or the attending physician must be capable of inserting an airway.
Jackson’s drug use initially developed in 1988 via a scalp condition called discoid lupus or skin lupus. Its sensitivity to sunlight is why he wore wigs. For this auto-immune problem, medication would have been prescribed. Further to that he suffered vitiligo on his hand. That’s a strong pigmentation. On black skin, the discoloration would be white spots. It is what began his wearing of the sequined glove. And subsequent allover bleaching of the skin to even out the vitiligo would have required additional prescriptions.
Near the end, he often resorted to a wheelchair. Doctors close to his personal doctors postulate that he was in pain. That he might be experiencing fibromyalgia which, I am told, “goes along with vitiligo. It’s pain in your muscles, pain all over, a chronic pain situation, which allows no more than two hours sleep at any one time. When already suffering two auto immune diseases, this is not uncommon.”
THANKS to the New Yorker’s Rebecca Mead for her “The Talk of the Town” piece on me this week. A future suggested piece for her might be magician Steve Cohen‘s 90-minute five-a-week “Chamber Magic” inside the Waldorf Towers’ Douglas MacArthur Suite. He takes 55 patrons per show . . . Unlike what Dickens might’ve scribbled to a pal, Kathie Lee Gifford‘s “Just When I Thought I’d Dropped My Last Egg” came autographed with “I hope this makes you wet your Spanx.” . . . Ben Bradlee‘s 88th birthday party drew Jack Nicholson and his gorgeous daughter in a strapless white mini. It was fellow guest Anjelica Huston‘s first look at this 19-year-old whose mom is Rebecca Broussard, the lady who back aways booted girlfriend Anjelica from Nicholson’s side — or front . . . Daytime diva Linda Dano putting her prewar Upper West Side penthouse pied-à-terre, with all its furnishings, up at Sotheby’s.
WITH an arbitration panel absolving Jeremy Piven‘s sushi or didn’t he sushi and mercury poison reasoning for having ankled “Speed-the-Plow,” I’m reminded of actor Farley Granger, who was on Broadway forever ago in something named “Talley & Son” and believed the show must always go on even with food poisoning. Lacking a chance to eat one whole day, he grabbed a quick burger near the theater minutes before curtain time. Must’ve been mule meat, because he had an attack of food poisoning and whoopsed nonstop throughout Act 1. The producers sent him home. He told me: “I hate to miss even a minute doing a show. In my life, I’ve only missed one other performance. In ‘Deathtrap.’ I was so sick that they sent me home for fear I’d infect the audience.”
ANTHROPOLOGISTS finally discov ered why Sarah Palin had multiple children. Up in Eskimoland they believe sex is performed by rubbing noses. And that Dristan is a birth-control device.
ARE we all aware Brooklyn Heights — Boerum Place and Schermerhorn Street — boasts a New York Transit Museum? This 60,000-square-foot largest public transportation museum in the US is housed in a decommissioned but still operational many-floors-down subway station. It’s more than 100 years of history. Vintage rolling stock beginning with the 1904 wooden El trains when a ride cost one coin with an Indian on one side, a buffalo on the other. You can board the cars, pass through antique turnstiles, see what the tunnels look like under our streets, check subway car ads that advertise 25-cent Arrow shirts, enter an original change booth where a matron exchanged your pennies for a nickel. Learn that with hand-held wheelbarrows, NYC’s entire subway system was completed in four years. And then check out the history of our stupid proposed Second Avenue subway, which — with computerization, mechanization, modernization and amortization, has been forever in still never getting started.
FRANCINE Lefrak‘s Le Cirque birth day party for Realtor husband Rick Friedberg: She said she’s teaching Rwandan women to crochet bead bracelets, which may be sold in order to supplement their 20-cent-a-day income. Former Gov. Jim McGreevey, working with inmates, said: One out of 99 Americans is in jail. We, 5 percent of the world’s population, are 25 percent of the prison population. This year 700,000 inmates will be released. And, as they discussed the downtrodden, a tumbler of very up-trodden red wine got spilled all over my beige silk outfit.
Only in New York, kids, only in New York.