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After heart surgery comes rehab — walking, then maybe some laps in the pool, slowly regaining strength and stamina.
For Robin Williams, who had heart surgery in March, rehab meant more than time on the treadmill. The famously manic comic also needed to regain his strength on stage, to make sure he had the stamina for a full set, and maybe even to reassure himself that he was still funny.
Williams, 58, was in the middle of the “Self Destruction” tour, in Florida, when he had trouble breathing and was hospitalized. He later underwent replacement of his aortic valve, an operation that felt less routine because his older brother Robert had died after heart surgery in 2007.
By July, when Williams met with TV critics in Los Angeles to talk about his new HBO special, the surgery had become a series of punch lines.
—“I had the surgery at the Cleveland Clinic, and I woke up going, ‘Where am I?’ And they said, ‘Cleveland.’ And I kept going, ‘Why?’”
—“You go in, and they really tell you that you’re going to get a cow valve.” No problem: “The grazing is easy.”
But Williams acknowledged that the experience changed him, and he seemed thoughtful and unusually subdued during a half-hour Q&A session, joking a lot but going off on few wild tangents.
Recent years have been especially turbulent for Williams. In addition to his surgery and his brother’s death, he entered treatment in 2006 for a relapse of alcohol abuse, and his marriage of almost 20 years broke up last year.
Then, the heart surgery, which “really opens you up, literally.”
During an appearance afterward with David Letterman, whose “quintuple bypass trumps me big time,” Letterman leaned over during the break and asked, “Do you find yourself getting emotional?”
Williams’ response: “Oh, yeah.”
The recuperation, which meant taking three months off, wasn’t all smooth sailing.
“Coming back out of it, you think, ‘I’m going to be fine,’” he said. “And then the first few months, you’re like, ‘Not really.’”
Eventually, “You really do appreciate the simplest things like breath and friends,” and you decide, “Yeah, I’ve got to keep going, just take it a little slower.”
Williams has been back on the road, updating and polishing the act, since summer. On a professional level, he’s happy still to be working “and doing stand-up, I’m very proud of that.”
But asked about his biggest personal accomplishments, he said, “My three children. All of them astonish me.”
Contrary to the title of his recent movie, “I’m not the world’s greatest dad. I’m a work in progress. But I’m so proud of them.”
Son Zak, 26, “graduated from NYU with a degree in linguistics.” Daughter Zelda, 20, “has been acting and doing mainly horror movies, which is always great. ‘We loved it when you got slashed. It was so good.’ And my other son (Cody, 18) is writing, studying poetry and literature and art history. All of these things, to me, that’s the ultimate production deal.”
Williams got his first national exposure in 1977 in an HBO “Young Comedians” special, then returned in 1978 with the groundbreaking “Off the Wall,” in which he bounced around the stage in baggy pants and suspenders.
He comes full circle Sunday with “Weapons of Self Destruction,” taped last month in Washington during a sold-out tour.
If the Robin Williams of 2009 had a chance to meet the Robin Williams of 1978, what would he tell the kid with the suspenders and wild hair?
“Brace yourself,” he’d say. “It’s going to be a long run, and it’s going to be an interesting one.”
With 30 years perspective, “There’s nothing I regret,” Williams said. “I’ve learned a lot over the years.
“Not everything worked, but at least it was interesting to try.”
