14 DAY TRIAL // Here’s why everybody loves Joan Rivers: she’s not just the queen of mean, she’s also the queen of one-liners, and they’re frequently about herself. The night before she was rushed to the hospital and was put in a medically induced coma, she was doing stand-up comedy at the Laurie Beechman Theater – joking about how she might drop dead any moment.
One fan who was lucky enough to be in attendance recorded that bit and posted it online, on his blog MarkAtLarge. The joke about her imminent death has gone viral because doctors are waking her up from her coma today and there’s a fair chance she might remain impaired for the rest of her life.
“It’s hard getting old,” the comedienne is heard saying. “I’m getting so old. I am now 81 years old, I could die at any second! Pufft, like that.”
“Do you understand you would have something to talk about the rest of your life? ‘You were there!’ ‘I was there, she just went over’,” Joan jokes, as the audience breaks out in loud laughter.
Joan was never afraid to direct the same kind of humor she used on everybody else onto herself. She joked about her plastic surgery, about her addiction to Botox and not wanting to look old, she joked about her love life and her lovers, her fashion and her love of diamonds.
Like with every other topic she used in her routines, she could be very harsh when she joked about herself, but that just showed that all those other things she said didn’t originate from her desire to hurt people but to entertain.
Joan Rivers is now on life support at the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, dependent on machines even in the final process of being brought out of her coma. She is still listed as being in critical condition, after being brought here from a private clinic where she was undergoing a routine endoscopy when she went into respiratory and cardiac arrest.
Once she arrived at the hospital, she was put in a coma to allow her vital signs to go back to normal.
Reports online claim that doctors have warned the family that she might wake up with brain damage, which would either leave her “a vegetable” or confine her to a wheelchair for the rest of her life.
Joan Rivers has always been a fighter – and her family, peers and fans are hoping she will still come out of this just as shameless, direct and hilarious as always.