7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Fine Arts Center, 30 W. Dale St., $40, $36 FAC members, $50 VIP includes priority seating, special lanyard and a first-in-line spot for the post-show meet and greet; 634-5583, csfineartscenter.org.

There’s only one topic comedian Ralphie May shies away from – his health.

“People are already nervous about me medically,” he says. “If you’re fat, you’re about to die. I do bring it up occasionally. When you have kids, you stop living for yourself and start living for them. They’re a huge motivation to get better and be better. I’m healthy as a horse – I’m as big as one and as healthy as one.”

May will perform Tuesday at the Fine Arts Center.

The 400-pound comedian spent the end of 2011 fighting for his life after a bout of bilateral double pneumonia and a pulmonary embolism landed him in the hospital. He literally had to stay awake for seven days and consciously take every breath, he says. The doctors gave him a 10 percent chance to live.

“The stuff in my lungs was the consistency of peanut butter,” he says. “I was drowning for seven days. Between that and the sleep deprivation, it really (expletive) me up. I suffered from PTSD.”

The issue causes him to reflect on the large military presence in Colorado Springs and the empathy he feels for soldiers who suffer from the same disorder.

“I’ve woken up from nightmares thinking I’m going to die,” he says. “I’m constantly thinking about my own mortality. I get it. I’m a big proponent for those guys, for those men and women. I’ve been in 19 war zones, and when you do that, you put your life in soldiers’ hands. I’m just there to make them forget where they are for a couple of hours. I’m an ambassador for those guys.”

Even in a 20-minute phone conversation, May displays the impromptu schtick that earned him second place on the inaugural season of “Last Comic Standing,” a reality TV competition, in 2003. He can riff on car insurance, Ebola and the Denver airport without taking a breath.

“I’m going to talk about a lot of events that happened in the last eight to nine months,” he says. “We’re losing planes more than ever. It’s been an amazingly racist-y year. With Donald Sterling, and all of the horrible violence and riots. CNN did not help. They’re a (expletive) agitator. It’s like, ‘There’s a riot if you want to come down and start stealing.’ They were giving out the addresses. I think that they start a lot of (expletive).”

At 17, May won a contest to open for the late comedian Sam Kinison. Since then he’s released five comedy albums, including “Too Big to Ignore” in 2011, and worked the stand-up circuit for 25 years.

“I have a different attitude than most,” says May. “I also do self-exploration with the audience, to look inside their own racist hearts, and I play games with them. Everybody’s racist in traffic. They bring up (expletive) that’s not even relevant. It bothers me that people are so uptight these days, and won’t even admit it. They have prejudices built in. I let them know.”

JEN MULSON, THE GAZETTE, 636-0270, 
JEN.MULSON@GAZETTE.COM