Eric Bischoff “Almost Died Twice” During Recent Health Scare
Eric Bischoff has revealed that he was close to death – twice – after a recent addition to his diet almost led to him losing part of his intestines.
Speaking on his 83 Weeks podcast, Eric Bischoff explained that an attempted change of diet almost had catastrophic results:
“I’m hypoglycemic, meaning if I have a candy bar, I’ll pass out. I’m reading about all this stuff and one of the things I read was using a supplement like Metamucil or, in this case, I used…psyllium husks. So, I’m thinking I’m going to add these psyllium husks to my repertoire.
“I’m looking at the directions and it says ‘Recommended one to three tablespoons.’ And I’m going, ‘Well, that’s for the average person.’ Since I spent 30 years in the wrestling business, I know that if one to three is good for the average person that I need a minimum of four to five, because that’s how that works. That’s where I stopped, I didn’t read the rest of the directions, especially the important part that said, ‘Don’t start out with a maximum dose right away, work your way up to it.’
After drinking the psyllium husks in a smoothie, things quickly went wrong:
“I get up, go to the bathroom, and I’m passing buckets of blood, like lots of it.”
After spending the night at home, hoping for the issue to resolve itself, Bischoff found his blood pressure to be very low and was able to tell his wife that he needed to go to the hospital before passing out multiple times.
He was sent home after the bleeding appeared to stop but two days later it began again and he was back in the hospital:
“So, now they are having a discussion with me about how much of my intestines they are going to surgically remove, and give me a little bag. And I’m going, ‘Oh no, we’re not doing anything’ but the doctor was pretty serious.”
Surgery took place to try and determine if any of Bischoff’s intestines needed to be removed but the doctors abandoned the operation as the bleeding became too much and they ran out of Bischoff’s blood type:
“I had used up all of the blood they had at the hospital or in the county where I live in. So, they put me in a helicopter and life-flighted me up to Billings, Montana because they had better equipment and experienced surgeons up there and all that kind of stuff.”
After another few days, the WWE Hall of Famer was on the mend and doctors were stumped as to what was wrong with him, but he knew:
“It was a complete mystery. And I’m thinking, “It’s not a mystery, I know exactly what happened. I took those three big heaping tablespoons of psyllium.’
The lining of your intestines are so vascular that it heals very, very quickly so over the course of 24 hours, whatever I tore up healed and now with all the tests they had, they couldn’t tell me what was wrong with me. But I knew, I told the doctor, I said, ‘I’m pretty sure’ because it was the only thing that I did differently.
The doctor did tell me, he said, ‘You almost died twice, you almost died in Cody and you almost died here.'”
Thankfully, Bischoff noted that he is feeling a lot better as he continues to recover from his close call.