General Hospital’s Chad Duell Opens Up About the Health Scare That Resulted in His Recent Recast: ‘I Thought I Was Dying’
“It was like an episode of House.”
When General Hospital temporarily recast Michael again recently with Robert Adamson, fans feared that Chad Duell had contracted COVID again. In fact, “I thought I had COVID again,” he said during the September 18 edition of castmate Maurice Benard’s State of Mind vlog. “I had the symptoms of it: the fever, the cough, a weird headache… ”
Duell’s tests can back negative, but he assumed that they were wrong, that maybe he’d come down with a new strain of the virus. Then, “on the fourth day, all of a sudden, my chest started hurting unbelievably bad,” he said. “I felt like I was having a heart attack. Holy crap. It was so painful.”
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What the Heck?!?
The Emmy winner thought to himself, “If I have COVID, it probably went to my chest. I should go to the hospital.” After he was admitted, his troponin levels were tested to determine whether he had, in fact, had a heart attack. Nope. All good there.
Finally, an angiogram revealed that Duell was suffering from “acute myocarditis, which is inflammation of the heart muscles” that can occur after exposure to a virus — like COVID. He’s “OK now,” he hastened to note, “but I thought I was dying.”
A New Perspective
The pain was so bad that even morphine didn’t help. And being in the hospital drove Duell so up the wall that ultimately, “I left against medical advice.” But while he was there, he did some serious reflecting. “When you think you might die, you start to reevaluate some things, see what’s important,” he said. “The worst thing when you’re about to pass is unrealized potential — that and who you love and who loves you. That’s all that matters in the end.”
Now Duell is moving forward with more resolve than ever. “I have to do what I’m capable of,” he said.
Review Michael’s life and times in the below photo gallery.
Video: YouTube/State of Mind
