Patrick Swayze Getting Over Pneumonia

Actor Patrick Swayze sat down for an interview -- and stood up for a dance -- with Barbara Walters. Swayze spoke openly about his yearlong battle with pancreatic cancer.

(Ron Tom/ABC)
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Swayze Takes on 'The Beast'

Beginning last July, Swayze began a grueling five months in Chicago filming his new TV series, called "The Beast," working 12 hours or more each day, mostly in cold, nighttime conditions.

Swayze, who plays an FBI agent, was proud to say that "nobody on the set ever saw me whine, moan like a girly-loser-man. I would do an attitude adjustment every morning."

"I've always known that Patrick is a really tough guy, but until all this illness came up in this past year, I had no idea really, the depths of his toughness and, and the amount of fight in him," said Niemi.

Still, at one point he considered giving in. "By the third episode in, at one point I didn't know if I was gonna finish this thing and I thought I'd made a big mistake," he said. "It just made me angry at myself though."

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No matter how bad he felt, Swayze said he refused to take painkilling medicine. "If it's about pain, I can deal with it. I, I can rage my way through it. When you're shooting, you can't do drugs," he told Walters. "I can't do Hydrocodone or Vicodin or these kinds of things that take the edge off it, 'cause it takes the edge off your brain."

In five months, Swayze missed 1½ days of work.

Through it all, Niemi was by his side, during the private hours of excruciating pain and on the set, always supporting his decision to continue the work he loves. She even directed him in an episode.

She said it was Swayze's decision to commit to the series, but "the moment he showed up in Chicago there was this enormous burst of energy that was stunning. And that kind of said, you know, maybe we are in the right place."

The couple met 36 years ago, when 16-year-old Niemi walked into his mother's dance studio in Houston, and the 20-year-old Swayze became smitten for life.

Married for 33 years, Swayze said of his wife, "I have no greater respect for any other human being on this earth like I have for her. Part of me says I couldn't have made it through without her, but, of course, the other part of me says I could have, but not nearly as elegantly as I have."