On doctors telling him he has less than 6 months to live:
“WWE got me into, because it was a brain injury, the Shepherd Center in Atlanta, which is the three top places in the world for brain injuries. Poor people have to wait for years to get into there.
They got me in there, and I felt bad about it because there were people in there that needed it, and I didn’t feel like I did, but I was there. They recommended I have all these treatments, and I breezed through all these treatments in six weeks.
I had to learn my balance, all these things. But at the same time, my legs are swelling worse and all this stuff. I’m just trying to walk and I’m thinking it’s the head injury. I’m gasping for air. Anyway, eventually I came back to work for a couple of months. That year, I went to BOLA, but I was struggling.
They sent me for a scan because my legs were swelling. They did a scan of my abdomen. Luckily, again, fortunately for me, there’s a cardiologist in the room. This lady saved my life.
She said, ‘Hang on a minute, something doesn’t look right.’ But they couldn’t scan there again, because I’ve already been injected Friday and they said to come back Monday.
I went home. Within an hour of me being in the house, my cardiologist called me going ‘I’m sorry. You’ve probably got less than 6 months to live.’ What happened was this sack around my heart completely calcified around my heart. It looked like a goose egg. It was completely constricted. It had just grown into a solid lump of rock.
They cut me open and he’s tapping on it at the beginning, tapping on this goose egg with a scalpel, tap tap, tap. Then 3 hours later, you can see where he’s peeled it all off. You can see a completely beating heart. If they didn’t take this off, I would have had six months to live. It’s a very rare operation. There’s only a few people who can do that.”
*Go to the NEXT page to continue reading this article
