Tuesday, December 02, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Siegfried says Roy's doing well

Fischbacher gives television audience optimistic report about partner's recovery

Siegfried Fischbacher offered a nationwide audience of "The Today Show" optimism about the recovery of stage partner Roy Horn, saying there's a good chance the injured performer will spend Christmas in Las Vegas.

Fischbacher also repeated a theory about Horn having a stroke onstage, a theory that diminishes a bite injury inflicted by the duo's show tiger, that he first shared with patrons of a Las Vegas cancer benefit Nov. 20.

The magician told Matt Lauer on the NBC morning show Monday that Horn is steadily recovering. "The doctors say it's a miracle," he said.

"He is moving now, little by little," he added. "(He's) speaking a few words ... but this develops also every day."

Horn has been off his respirator for two weeks, Fischbacher said. Horn was bitten in the neck by one of the duo's show tigers Oct. 3.

"He had multi-ministrokes," Fischbacher told Lauer. "He was not attacked. ... The stroke was the accident. ... We found out afterwards it was not the blood loss but the stroke."

A new piece of information was Fischbacher saying that Horn had been on blood-pressure medication since his mother died in June 2000.

"And sometimes he said before, days before to me, `I feel terrible. Sometimes I feel like I am passing out. I have to stop the show.'

"This is my theory," Fischbacher said, "because I watch from the side, I know exactly what (the tiger) Montecore is thinking, I know exactly what Roy is thinking, what's going on and I couldn't understand."

But "when I get the result from the X-rays and so on, there was no injury (from) Montecore, it was just a little punch hole. ... Montecore carried him 30 feet offstage to his safety. Now that's a story."

It's a story that contradicts doctor accounts in the wake of the injury: Horn having severe blood loss the night of the attack and later the same night, suffering a stroke so severe it required surgeons to remove one-quarter of his skull to enable his swelling brain to expand.

Las Vegas neurosurgeon Lonnie Hammargren's published comments about the procedure, known as a craniectomy, rankled University Medical Center officials, who said it might have violated patient privacy laws.

Horn's condition is still categorized as serious, Bernie Yuman, the duo's personal manager, said by telephone from New York on Monday afternoon.

"He's not in the survival mode at all. He is in the recovery mode," Yuman said. "I don't want to downgrade the seriousness of this, but eight weeks ago we were facing death."

"He's writing prolific notes," Yuman added of the performer's ability to communicate.

Yuman did not say when Horn might be moved back to Las Vegas from the University of California, Los Angeles, where he was transferred Oct. 28 from the UMC Trauma Center.