But what he and his telethon do to give hope to hundreds of thousands of people with neuromuscular diseases is surely a little slice of heaven.

When the 2003 Jerry Lewis Muscular Dystrophy Telethon begins Sunday at 9 p.m. on some 200 "Love Network" stations across the country, anyone who hasn't seen Lewis for a year or two will probably be taken aback by his appearance.

"I look like Orson Welles in heat," he says.

In sharp contrast to the MDA logo showing a gaunt caricature of the comedian circa the 1950s, Lewis' face and body are rather grotesquely bloated from steroids he takes to fight pulmonary fibrosis — a condition caused by inflammation and scar tissue in his lungs.

It's rather jarring to those of us who have laughed at his movie antics and have watched him stay seemingly impervious to age year after year on the telethon.

Lewis has been saying that in several months, his doctors will let him get off the steroids. He's been saying that for at least a year now. I wouldn't bet against the 77-year-old, though. Who knows, perhaps next Labor Day, he'll be back to his fighting weight.

Fighting is something the guy knows all about.

When he was making movies, he would battle with directors and studio executives.

Once, back in the 1960s, he got into big-time trouble for saying on national TV that he fulfilled a life's ambition on an airplane trip by "going to the bathroom over Mississippi."

He later apologized, of course, but I wonder if he did so because he worried that his remarks might affect telethon donations from residents of that state.

Mostly, he has fought for those who had almost nobody else fighting for them.

This weekend, about a million volunteers will be working on the Jerry Lewis Telethon to help the more than 1 million Americans who are affected by neuromuscular diseases. About 250,000 have some form of muscular dystrophy.

Among the 40 diseases Lewis and the MDA are fighting are nine forms of muscular dystrophy, ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease), myasthenia gravis, spinal muscular atrophy and Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease.

Lewis has been involved with battling the disease since 1948. In March 1952, he and partner Dean Martin did the first MDA telethon in New York only. It raised $70,000.

Last year's national telethon received pledges and donations of $58.3 million.

It hasn't been enough, not yet, anyway.

I don't remember a year when I haven't watched and contributed to the telethon. Watching Sammy Davis Jr. sing "Music of the Night" from "Phantom" was incredible. So was seeing Frank Sinatra bring the long-estranged Martin and Lewis together years ago.

It seemed that every famous entertainer would eventually find his or her way onto the telethon, but mostly I remember Jerry Lewis clowning around and then making heart-rending appeals for pledges to help "his kids" with muscular dystrophy.

Each year, I would root for the telethon to reach its goal of "one dollar more" than the previous year. I can only remember one time when it didn't, during the Jimmy Carter recession years. Times are tough now, too. I hope that doesn't keep Lewis and the telethon from getting that "one dollar more."

If the local people MDA has working on the situation have anything to say about it, things will probably be fine.

The Oneonta telethon co-hosts are John Frisch and Mark Jeffers, who have been doing an incredible job for several years. On the other side of the cameras, Dave Geasey and Chuck Smith do highly professional work coordinating the show with the invaluable help of Becky Ashe, who is the head tabulator and head operator, and many volunteers.

The telethon will be on from 9 p.m. Sunday to 6 p.m. Monday on Time Warner Cable channels 23, 27 and local UHF channel 15. Last year, the folks in the local telethon areas of Oneonta, Cooperstown, Sidney, Oxford, New Berlin, Delhi, Bainbridge, Mount Upton, Walton and Stamford came through for "Jerry's kids."

Despite the rocky economy, I have every confidence they will come through again.

Jerry Lewis has battled all kinds of injuries and ailments through the years, but he's still fighting. He doesn't want any sympathy for how he looks or for his health problems.

"When you get to be 77 years old," he says, "it comes with the dinner."

I hate to think of it being a race to see which succumbs first — muscular dystrophy or Jerry Lewis — but nobody lasts forever, not even master comedians.

Here's hoping Jerry Lewis wins that race, for himself, and — more importantly — for all the children and adults who need our help.

Sam Pollak is editor of The Daily Star. He can be reached at spollak@thedailystar.com or at (607) 441-7208.