Ken Jeong – you know, him out of Community and Crazy Rich Asians and The Hangover films and so on – often plays doctors on TV and in films, most notably the titular Dr Ken on his own sitcom. And thus it’s easy to overlook the fact that he’s actually a doctor, with a genuine medical degree and everything.
In fact, he did his MD at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1995, meaning that he must have seen some amazing gigs – Archers of Loaf! Ben Folds Five! All the Mammoth and Merge artists! Man, it was an early 90s indie rock GOLDEN AGE.
Anyway: the point is that Jeong is a real medico with proper training and everything, who practiced medicine in LA for several years while getting his acting and comedy career underway. And thus when someone in the audience at his show in Phoenix started having seizures on Saturday night, he was well placed to handle them.
At first he reportedly handled them comedically, thinking that he was being heckled. But once he’d established that the audience member was actually in acute distress he cleared space and stayed with her until paramedics arrived, along with another member of the audience who, conveniently, was an EMT.
Of course, the US’s pay-as-you-go medical system can be horrifically expensive for those that don’t have private health insurance (and merely terrifyingly expensive for those who do), so the lesson here is clear: if you’re feeling poorly, America, get along to see Ken Jeong do stand up.
As the old saying goes: laughter truly is the best… um, acute emergency first aid.