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Jun 29, 2009 9:33 pm US/Eastern
Miami Beach Surgeon Treated Michael Jackson
MIAMI BEACH (CBS4) ―
"He looked me in the eye, and goes, do you have any candy? Candy makes me smile. It was like talking to a 4 or 5 year old kid."
It was that sweet, yet haunting, childlike exchange between a 40-year-old Michael Jackson and Miami's noted orthopedic surgeon Dr. Mark Sinnreich that made him realize the global icon was, "a kid in an adult body. He looked like an adult, but he didn't act it at all."
Jackson was a superstar in search of serious painkillers and treatment for a fractured wrist when he met Dr. Sinnreich in Miami ten years ago this week. He had his plane stop in the Magic City en route from South Africa where he injured his wrist in a dance move. Dr. Sinnreich met him at 5 a.m. in an eerily empty emergency room, at the former Cedars Hospital. At first couldn't belive his eyes.
"I had him take off his mask and you could see the nose was very damaged from plastic surgery," said Dr. Sinnreich. "I think that's why he wore the mask so much. It looked almost like he had two blow holes. No nose."
What worried the South Florida doctor, who put a cast on the star's wrist, was Jackson's request for shots of Demeral and the amount he says he asked for.
"He requested 200 milligrams of Demeral. I thought that was a lot because normally we would give someone that size and weight 50 milligrams. So that is four times the dose. But he said that he needs more since he had this burn. And I know burns are very, very painful," Sinnreich told
Chief I-Team Investigator Michele Gillen.
Keep in mind this was a decade ago and Jackson explained his need for heavy prescription drugs this way.
"He said that ever since he was in that Pepsi commercial and burned his hair that he had a lot of pain and that he had a very high tolerance to pain medication."
An icon living in a stratisphere of normally getting what he wanted -- from candy to perhaps prescription drugs -- left at least one doctor who saw him as national treasure worried that his flame might extinguish all too soon.
"I was very concerned, especially given what happened to Elvis," he shared with Gillen. "You always could predict that something like this would happen. I am actually surprised he lasted as long as he did. That was a lot of medicine to take."
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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