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Ellen Takes It Lying Down

Tue., May. 1, 2007 9:21 AM PDT by Gina Serpe

Next time, Ellen DeGeneres should stick to the safety dance.

The daytime yapper is hosting this week's edition of her eponymous talk show from a makeshift hospital bed set up on her stage, after doctors ordered her to bed rest after she tore a ligament in her back.

"I wasn't planning on starting this until at least season seven," the host said after being wheeled out on the bed. "I'm forced to bed rest right now, and let me just start by saying, I'm on pills."

DeGeneres made the announcement during a show that was taped on Monday and set to air today, explaining that the injury occurred when she bent down in her kitchen to pick up her dog, "who weighs about the size of a sandwich...A good-size sandwich."

"I felt a tear," DeGeneres said while speaking to E! News anchor Ryan Seacrest. "I tore a ligament and did something to something else. That's what happened, and they said that I'm not able to sit, to move or to do anything."

"They" in this case is DeGeneres' physician Fred Lerner and her 22-year-old ER technician Frankie Conrad, who also appeared on the show to give their official diagnosis and prove that the unhappy accident wasn't simply a stunt to help usher in May sweeps—not that the ensuing publicity blitz is likely to hurt the show's ratings.

"This is not a sweeps stunt or anything like that," DeGeneres clarified on air. "This is not like what Regis [Philbin] did—that whole bypass surgery."

As it is, DeGeneres did have a sweeps stunt in the works for Thursday's show, though has been forced to cancel it in the wake of her supine stupor.

The Oscar host, who, as part of her bed rest orders, has been prohibited from traveling, has had to scrap a heavily promoted episode that was scheduled to take place aboard a private Delta 767 flight from Los Angeles to New York this week. There's no word yet on when the jet-set special will be rescheduled.

In the meantime, the 49-year-old funnylady has also been forced to renege on plans to attend a Make-A-Wish Foundation charity event in Chicago this Saturday, also owing to her inability to travel.

DeGeneres' interview with Seacrest airs today. On Monday, the bedridden entertainer also pretaped a show with Lindsay Lohan, set to air Wednesday.