Celebrity Mound

After eight years of silence, Meg Ryan is finally opening up about her failed marriage to Dennis Quaid and the reason for their shocking split.

In 2000, Ryan, now 46, famously had a fling with her Proof of Life co-star Russell Crowe; the affair ended her marriage to Quaid (with whom she has a son, Jack, 16).

But she tells the new issue of InStyle (excerpted by Entertainment Tonight), “Dennis was not faithful to me for a very long time, and that was very painful.

“I found out more about that after I was divorced,” she adds.

Of Crowe, she says: “I think he took a big hit. But Russell didn’t break up the marriage. He was definitely there at the end, but it wasn’t his fault. I was a mess. I hurt him too at the end. I couldn’t be in another long relationship, it wasn’t the time for that. So I got out.”

She continues, “My time as a scarlet woman was really interesting. As painful as it was, it was also incredible liberating. Now I was utterly free. I didn’t have to care about what people thought.”

She also says being dubbed “America’s Sweetheart” was stifling at the time.

“It’s an old-fashioned idea, so anachronistic. I understood it was a compliment about being lovable, and it felt nice … but it also felt, after a time, like ideas were being projected onto me that had nothing to do with me,” she says.

“The girl next door to what?” she continues. “I never felt like a very conventional person.”

So she says she purposely chose to take a break from the public spotlight.

“I’ve been famous for a long time, and these last years, there’s been a great lull,” she says. “So it has been me throwing a backpack on, traveling a lot — it’s been fantastic.”

She found something special along the way: Daughter Daisy, a baby girl from China, whom she adopted three years ago.

“I don’t feel like I adopted a child. I feel like I just got this unbelievable companion,” Ryan tells the magazine. “Daisy is brilliant. This kid says things every day that make you just stop and stare at her.”

(source)

Dennis Quaid said staff at the prestigious Cedars-Sinai Medical Center misled him while his newborn twins were being treated there, telling him the children were “fine” even as doctors scrambled to reverse a blood thinning medicine overdose.

Quaid told the Los Angeles Times in an interview published Tuesday that he called the hospital the night of Nov. 18 and was assured that his children with his wife, Kimberly, were “fine.”

But about two hours before that call, nurses had noticed his daughter oozing blood from an intravenous site on her arm and a spot on her heel, state records show. The Quaids said no one notified them, and they feel betrayed and misled.

“Our kids could have been dying, and we wouldn’t have been able to come down to the hospital to say goodbye,” Quaid told the newspaper.

Hospital spokesman Richard Elbaum declined to address most of the Quaids’ allegations directly.

“Throughout the course of their children’s hospitalization and continuing today, we have reached out to the Quaids to discuss any concerns or questions they have,” Elbaum said. “We would like to continue to discuss all of these and any other concerns directly with the Quaids to identify and resolve any questions.”

The Quaids sued the makers of heparin last month, saying Baxter Healthcare Corp., based in Deerfield, Ill., was negligent in packaging different doses of the product in similar vials with blue backgrounds. Three patients, including the twins, received vials containing 10,000 units per milliliter of heparin instead of vials with a concentration of 10 units per milliliter.

Baxter spokeswoman Deborah Spak said last month the problem was “improper use of a product.” In February, the company sent a letter warning health care workers to carefully read labels on the heparin packages.

The Quaids’ lawyer, Susan E. Loggans, said the hospital was slow to provide full documentation, and that her clients have not made a decision about whether to add the hospital to a lawsuit against the heparin manufacturer who supplied the drug.

“We want to see how they respond,” she said. “We’d like to give them a chance to right a wrong.”

The hospital has previously issued an apology to the patients’ families and said it has taken steps to provide more training to staff and review all policies and procedures involving high-risk medication.

Dennis Quaid’s newborn twins are fighting for their lives after being inadvertently overdosed at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

Sources tell us the twins — Thomas Boone and Zoe Grace — were accidentally given a massive dose of Heparin, an anti-coagulant. Babies typically get 10 units. Our sources say they were each mistakenly given 10,000 units. The drug is used to flush out IV lines and prevent blood clots. We’re told one dose was given on Sunday morning, another on Sunday evening.

We’re told late Sunday night, both babies started to “bleed out.” Both babies are now at Cedars in the neo-natal intensive care unit where we’re told they are stable.
The twins were born to Quaid and wife Kimberly Buffington November 8 via surrogate.

A rep for Quaid did not immediately return our call for comment and there was no immediate comment from Cedars.

We’re told a technician stored the Heparin in the wrong place, and when a nurse grabbed the medicine for the babies without looking — it was the wrong dosage.

A source says the babies are now being given Protamine, which reverses the effects of Heparin.

UPDATE: We’re told as many as thirteen patients at Cedars were mistakenly given the overdose of Heparin, but the effects are more critical because of the age and weight of the twins.

(source)