When I was a teenager, my father told me how Jim Henson really died, and this is how it happened, according to what my father heard from news reports: Jim went into the hospital for a simple operation; then, all of a sudden, Jim went into septic shock and died, a victim of medical malpractice.

No surgery is simple. That term should be banned. Anytime anyone has surgery, it can be life or death. So, if you throw out the term simple, Jim had SURGERY, and therefore, it can happen that one can die from many things. Even childbirth can be deadly. Whether it's natural or C-section. So, once people get it out of their heads that there are simple surgeries, then they will learn that it can be life-threatening.

PEOPLE magazine talked to Jim Henson's family for their cover story in the June
18, 1990 issue: "... if Henson's death at age 53 from a severe but treatable
disease, Group A streptococcus peneumonia appears unfathomable, it is not.
Its cause lay not entirely in the illness but, ironically and sadly, in his own
character. Henson's humility, his desire never to bother anyone--became
genuinely tragic flaws in the end. Not wanting to trouble his family, not wanting
to trouble the doctors--these were the reasons he postponed going to the
hospital until it was six to eight hours too late."

In 1986, Henson and his wife since 1959 legally separated. He left his
business to his five children and set in motion the sale to the Walt Disney
Co., which netted him up to $200 million and freed him to concentrate on
creative endeavors.

"On Saturday, May 12, on what was to be the last weekend of his life,
Henson, along with daughter Cheryl, made one of his frequent trips to the
rural farm town of Ahoskie, N.C., to visit his father and stepmother. That
night, Henson and Cheryl stayed at a nearby motel. Henson changed to an
earlier flight home.
"On Sunday, back in his three-bedroom apartment, Henson tried to rest for
a Muppet recording session the following day. On Monday, [Cheryl] visited
him, as did his assistant and his son. By 2 A.M. Henson was having
difficulty breathing and had been coughing up blood. Still, he did not leave
for a hospital. Part of the reason, says [wife] Jane, was his Christian Science
upbringing.
"The more critical reason was that he just didn't want to bother anyone. At
4 A.M. Henson finally told Jane, 'I'm breathing too hard. My heart's racing ...
Okay, I'll go to the hospital.'
"By the time Henson was admitted, his body was rapidly shutting down.
Initial X-rays showed small pockets of infection. Several hours later they
had spread through his lungs. At 8 A.M. Henson was anesthetized and put
on a ventilator. 'He was still completely alert, but not comfortable,' says
Jane. 'It was when he was anesthetized that we waved goodbye to him.
He didn't say anything. He waved a little. They said we could see him in the
intensive-care ward in a few hours.'
"They would not see him conscious again. Throughout that day, Jane, four
of their five children, Frank Oz and a handful of friends kept vigil in the
hospital corridor. 'Evening came, and it was quiet,' says Jane. 'We were
comforting each other, tiptoeing back and forth to see him. They were
giving him all kinds of antibiotics, trying to keep him alive long enough for
them to take effect.' At 1:21 Wednesday morning, after two cardiac
arrests, his heart stopped beating for the final time.
"At the end, Henson's own simple words, recited by his daughter Cheryl best
explained what had driven him. 'I believe in taking a positive attitude toward
the world,' he once wrote. 'My hope still is to leave the world a little bit
better than when I got here.' For at least as long as a green felt frog lives
in memory, there can be no question that he did." -- Susan Shindehette,
J.D. Podolsky in New York City, with reports from Los Angeles, London,
Orlando and Ahoskie (PEOPLE, June 18, 1990)

I wish Mr. Henson would've gone ahead and gotten that taken care of before it was too late. :(

From Muppet Wiki (http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Muppet_Wiki):
In late 1989, Jim Henson made a radical change in his career. Wanting to become less of a businessman and focus more on the creative side of the production, he entered into talks with Michael Eisner to sell his company and characters (minus Sesame Street) to the Walt Disney Company. After Henson's sudden and untimely death, negotiations went awry, and Disney would not acquire the Muppets until February 2004, which they now control through the wholly-owned subsidiary Muppets Holding Company, LLC.

Henson became sick with an extremely rare bacterial infection in May 1990 that, unfortunately, was discovered too late for him to receive proper treatment. Jim Henson died at 1:21 a.m. on Wednesday May 16, 1990, only about 20 hours after checking himself into the Emergency Room at New York Hospital, not realizing how sick he really was. Some reports say that it was a bacteria-based pneumonia, but in fact it was an internal version of the so-called flesh-eating bacteria, related to staph and strep, which is particularly virulent and can kill its victims within 48 hours.


I miss him:( :notworthy

I wish Mr. Henson would've gone ahead and gotten that taken care of before it was too late. :(

Me too. :(

I wish Mr. Henson would've gone ahead and gotten that taken care of before it was too late. :(

Me too. :( That story is just heartbreaking!!!

I wasn't aware of the circumstances of his death. How very tragic and preventable. He sure left a wonderful and enduring legacy.

I throught im Hendon passed Away in May of 1990

I had a premonition of his death, sometime soon before it occurred...


I had a disturbing dream, where one of his characters, Waldorf, the old man in the balcony, is just lying down, still and motionless; and his buddy, Statler is startled, looking at him.
If I'd also had a dream that included Kermit, Ernie, and others doing same, I'd have had a clue that something might be wrong with Jim.


:( :crying: