Conan O’Brien gave himself a concussion last weekend during a skit. He was hospitalized but is now back on his late-night task – with plenty of humor about the whole thing.
Conan O’Brien injured his head last week during a Tonight Show skit that began with a long race against guest Teri Hatcher. It ended with him hospitalized.
“I was doing a stunt and I hit my head and suffered a slight concussion,” he joked to his audience on Monday’s show. “And I promise, if you’re a good audience, I’ll do it again tonight.”
O’Brien had plenty of grade-A quippage to unravel about a head injury bad enough to land him on a gurney, halting taping for the night. How bad was it? “For five seconds,” he said, “I actually understood the plot of Lost.”
He slipped and slammed his head on the floor after racing Hatcher – and was able to stay awake long enough to name her the winner. But then, O’Brien recalled to the audience, he looked down at his cue card and basically saw a menu for an Egyptian restaurant.
“Tune in tomorrow when Eva Longoria pushes me down an elevator shaft,” he told the crowd. “It’s going to be sexy.”
His head trauma was serious enough for hospital care, but not enough for surgery. No doubt that O’Brien’s injury could have been worse. But, for those less fortunate, an injury can actually lead to plastic surgery.
After a car accident or other serious incident, victims can suffer injuries to their head far beyond a concussion. In the case of facial trauma, for example, victims can suffer a loss of volume in the face, appearning seriously disfigured.
When dealing with a high-impact wound below the forehead, a plastic surgeon is sometimes called in to perform reconstructive surgery on that area. One method is fat grafting, where the doctor transplants fat from another area of the patient’s body, and uses it to replace missing mass at the wound site. The process can require multiple operations and can take more time for the patient to feel “whole” again. However, a recent study has shown that fat grafting is an excellent solution for treating facial trauma, and can yield results as good as or even better than synthetic fillers.
These are extreme cases that have nothing to do with the degree of O’Brien’s accident, and for that, he can be glad. His longtime crony and current Tonight Show announcer Andy Richter would agree.
“I knew you’d hit your head. It looked like it was serious but then you called for a slo-mo,” Richter joked Monday night.
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