Carroll O'Connor, best known for his iconic role as All in the Family's cantankerous, working class bigot, was released from a Los Angeles hospital Thursday night after having a toe amputated.
Doctors removed the digit while performing surgery on the actor to improve circulation in his left leg. O'Connor, 76, suffers from diabetes, which affects his circulation. He's expected to make a full recovery from the amputation.
"Mr. O'Connor is in good condition," says Dr. Peter Guzy, O'Connor's personal physician.
To prove it, the actor, who won multiple Emmys playing the Bunker patriarch in Norman Lear's seminal 1970s television series, called a press conference to alert reporters to his discharge from UCLA Medical Center.
As he left the hospital, he hammed it up for TV crews, slipping off his shoe so the cameras could get a close-up of his bandaged foot.
He also showed off the plastic bottle he carries everywhere to urinate in. "When you're diabetic," he quipped, "you have to pee-pee a lot."
The actor checked into the hospital November 7 for the surgery. Unfortunately, complications set in and a vascular surgeon had to saw off part of the fourth toe of O'Connor's left foot during the one-hour operation.
The lost toe is the latest in a string of medical setbacks that derailed O'Connor's thespian pursuits. Last year, he went under the knife so doctors could fix adhesions from a previous gall bladder operation. In June 1998, doctors cleared a blockage in a heart artery to reduce his risk of stroke.
Despite his myriad ailments, O'Connor came out of semi-retirement to costar this year in Return to Me with David Duchovny and Minnie Driver, and was judged by most critics to be the best part of the maudlin romantic comedy.