On what happened when he met a doctor:
“I end up getting MRIs. I get the disk and I give it to the doctor there. I’m not exaggerating when I say this.
10 Minutes before I’m going out to do 3 hours of commentary, the doctor puts it into his computer. He puts it on, and this doctor was very stoic and didn’t say anything, and then he starts swearing.
He said, ‘Your legs are ok.’ Next thing, he hands me the phone. It’s Dr. Maroon in Pittsburgh. He says, ‘I’m looking at these pictures. Can you move your leg?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ I went and did 3 hours of commentary.
I came back on the phone. Dr. Maroon said, ‘Get on the plane. I can’t do it till Monday.’ This is Thursday night. He said, ‘Get on the plane on Sunday. Bring a family member with you. Do not do anything. Don’t sneeze, don’t move. Get up here straightaway.’
I get to Pittsburgh and Dr. Maroon said, ‘I’ve only ever seen something as bad as this once before, and that person was already in a wheelchair. I don’t know how you’re walking.’
I’m going, ‘No, I was just bridging the other day. I do a three minute bridge every day with my nose touching the mat.’
So it’s supposed to be an hour. They’re going with the first one in the front. They go in. I woke up. My wife sat by the bed. I look at the clock and it is six o’clock. He went there for four hours.
Dr. Maroon comes in and he looks like he’s run a marathon. He starts with, ‘If I would have known what it was, I would have gone straight in the back. We’re going to have to eventually go right in the back.’
They found out, and you can’t see it on MRI, I have got a huge big, like baseball sized ball of calcified jelly stuff holding my neck together.
It’s been like that, after talking, probably from that match with Steamboat. So he said ‘Once I opened it up, I saw this mass, so it took me 4 hours to scrape that away so we can fix it from the front.
When my neck got put back together, that was the first time I was sleeping in 20 years.”
*Go to the NEXT page to continue reading this article
