Jackson’s Health Threatens to Upstage Testimony Again

Michael Jackson hobbled into court a couple of minutes late Monday, wearing an expression that suggested great pain, and was followed a few steps behind by an emergency-room physician in a baseball jacket and hospital scrubs.

Sitting at the defense table before the proceedings, Jackson dabbed at his eyes with a tissue before retiring to a restroom with aides.

It was the third time in less than six weeks that Jackson’s health surfaced as an issue at his child-molestation trial, and it was yet another day in which the pop singer’s behavior threatened to upstage what was being said on the stand.

For some, it also underscored a question that has been raised in several ways since jury selection started on Jan. 31: Can the gaunt pop star endure the rigors of a long trial? Jackson is 5 feet 11 and weighed just 120 pounds at his arrest in 2003. He faces 20 years in prison if convicted on all counts.

Over the years, Jackson, 46, has been afflicted with a number of conditions during times of stress, from extreme nausea to debilitating panic attacks. He also has sought help for addiction to painkillers.

In 2002, he was bitten by a spider at his Neverland ranch in the Santa Ynez Valley, and he limped into a Santa Maria courtroom four hours late for his testimony in a contract dispute. Leaning on crutches, he told reporters: “It’s real bad. If I showed it to you, you’d be shocked.”

The following year in Indianapolis, he was feeling fatigued and was admitted to a hospital when he was scheduled to give a deposition in a copyright case.

“He can become very concerned and nervous at depositions,” said his lawyer in the Indianapolis case, Brian Oxman, who is helping with his defense now. “He doesn’t like lawsuits, and it makes him ill to have to cope with litigation that people seem to heap on him.”

Like other hard-driving entertainers, Jackson has been hospitalized for exhaustion. He also spent weeks in a drug-rehabilitation facility in 1993, explaining that he had been hooked on painkillers. At the time, skeptics said he merely wanted to avoid investigators looking into charges that he had molested a 13-year-old Los Angeles boy.

But there have been other health issues as well.

Jackson insists he has had only two cosmetic surgeries, but physicians who have examined his photos speculate that there have been many more.

In 1984, his hair caught fire as he was taping a Pepsi commercial, and Jackson suffered third-degree burns on a quarter-sized patch of his scalp. The experience triggered an interest in anatomy that culminated in the pop star’s observation of several brain surgeries, according to a 1991 autobiography by his sister LaToya. He also kept a human brain in a formaldehyde-filled jar -- a gift, he told his sister, from a physician friend.

Over the years, LaToya wrote, Jackson was taken to hospitals numerous times for panic attacks. While working on his “Off the Wall” album, he gasped: “Take me to the doctor -- I can’t breathe!” LaToya wrote.

Physicians found that he had “an extraordinarily small chest cavity that sometimes presses on his lungs,” she wrote. They gave him a sedative -- but he was so concerned about its possible effects that he panicked again.

Compulsive about his weight since his teens, Jackson would continually weigh himself on a scale. Later, he became compulsive about retaining his youth, and, according to the tabloids, slept in a hyperbaric chamber, a specialized device used to keep divers from getting the bends. Journalists later said that Jackson had fabricated the story to boost his sagging album sales.

Jackson biographer Christopher Andersen also was skeptical about Jackson’s well-publicized obsession with hygiene. The singer’s trademark surgical mask was “a suitably bizarre affectation” for drawing attention, Andersen wrote, pointing out that Jackson had no such squeamishness about changing the diapers of Bubbles, a beloved chimp he once owned.

On Monday, such concerns seemed remote. The pop star clutched the arms of a beefy bodyguard and his brother Jackie as he gingerly walked into court and lowered himself into his chair.

Raymone Bain, Jackson’s Washington, D.C., publicist, said the singer has been in severe back pain for weeks.

However, Dr. Bert Weiner, an emergency-room physician from Santa Ynez Valley Cottage Hospital, said Jackson had consulted him early Monday for a reason unrelated to back pain.

Weiner said that he accompanied the pop singer on the 35-mile drive to the courthouse and, while in the judge’s chambers, received results from medical tests that had been performed on Jackson earlier in the morning. He declined to disclose specifics of the singer’s medical condition.

As Jackson entered, some of the four dozen fans who filled the back rows of the courtroom sobbed at the sight of the apparently stricken pop star. A sheriff’s deputy supplied tissues that the fans passed around.

Later, during an afternoon break, one of the fans flashed Jackson a handwritten sign that said, “Get well soon,” before blowing him a kiss. In a weak voice, Jackson told reporters that he was in pain and taking medication provided by his doctor. He declined to identify the medication.

Last month, Jackson checked in to a hospital with the flu, delaying jury selection by a week. Two weeks ago, he fell and hurt his back as he was getting dressed. He arrived in court wearing blue pajama bottoms and barely avoided arrest for being late on the first full day that his accuser, now 15, testified.

This time, the pop star was not penalized for his tardiness, but court started 45 minutes late as Santa Barbara County Superior Court Judge Rodney S. Melville conferred in private with prosecutors, the defense and the physician. Jurors were given no explanation for the delay.