Porn icon Ron Jeremy leaves hospital following open-heart surgery

New York: Porn legend Ron Jeremy has quietly checked out of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center after back-to-back emergency surgeries for an aneurysm near his heart. He is convalescing at a Hollywood hotel for a little over a week now. “I came very close to death. I guess I have a very, very strong will to live,” he told the New York Daily News on Tuesday. The Queens-bred star of ‘Terms of Endowment’ and ‘High Heels, Low Standards’ said that he felt tingling in his hands, pain in his back and the sensation he had an “elephant sitting” on his chest when he drove himself to the southern California emergency room on January 30 - just hours before he was due to board a plane for his sister’s wedding. He thought it was indigestion, but he had an aortic dissection like what killed John Ritter, the ‘Three’s Company’ actor who died in 2003. He was told there was a 20 percent chance he’d die from the surgery. The 59-year-old actor blamed his hypertension, sleep apnea and poor diet for his medical woes. (ANI)