Eric Bischoff tells the story about a recent health incident and how it led to him almost passing away on two separate occasions.
The pro wrestling legend told the story on the most recent episode of his 83 Weeks podcast. Bischoff started off the story by telling listeners about his health and how he strives to maintain a very healthy lifestyle.
“This is a crazy story. I’m pretty healthy, I’m actually very healthy. I hardly ever get sick [aside from] the occasional cold, allergies get me more than anything once or twice a year. Overall, I’d rate my health… I’m 68 years old, an 8 or 9 on a scale of ten. I take no medications, I take a lot of supplements and things like that, but I’m not on any prescription medication or anything like that. I don’t have high blood pressure, none of that stuff. My wife and I, we eat really healthy. She’s really focused on it, I benefit from it. I get a fair amount of exercise, just no issues. No aches, no pains."
Bischoff then went on to explain the fact that he is hypoglycemic, which lead to him trying a new supplement in Psyllium Husk.
"In this quest to be even healthier than we already are, I'm reading about blood sugar. I’m hypoglycemic, meaning if I have a candy bar, I’ll pass out. Sugar has the exact opposite impact on me that it has on most people. Most people, if they need a jolt of energy they’ll have some Gatorade or eat a candy bar or something. If I do that, I’ll just pass out for about an hour, hour and a half. When I wake up, I feel horrible. Anyway, we’re reading about blood sugar and I’m actually thinking about getting this monitor, this glucose monitor because it enables you to really tell which foods spike your blood sugar the most. Sometimes it’s something you wouldn’t expect because it’s all different. So I’m reading about all of this stuff and one of the things I read, using a supplement like metamucil or this in case, Psyllium Husk. So I’m thinking I’m gonna add this Psyllium Husk to my repertoire, even though I eat a lot of fiber and all that stuff, I don’t have any issues in that regard but I thought ‘No, it’s even better! If one is good, two is better.’ [laughs] So I get this big canister of Psyllium Husk and I bring it home and I’m looking at the directions and it says recommended one to three tablespoons. I go, ‘Well that’s for the average person. Since I spent thirty years in the wrestling business, I know that if one to three is good for the average person, I might need a minimum of four to five.’ Cause 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. I didn’t get to that shot. So I take these big gigantic scoops of Psyllium Husk and I throw it into my smoothie, cause I’m drinking a smoothie cause I’m a healthy sum bitch. I’m drinking this thing that’s gonna make me even healthier, right?"
According to 'Easy E' himself, things went downhill from this point on, noting that issues began to arise when he started passing quite a lot of blood.
"I’m feeling good about myself, this is like three o’clock in the afternoon. So dinner time comes around, Mrs.B and I sit down and we’re eating our super healthy dinner that we do, we have a big salad, super super healthy. We eat, we’re watching TV, the same thing we do all the time. Everything is fine. I’m gonna clean this up a bit because it’s not the most pleasant thing to talk about. I get up [to go to the bathroom], I go to the bathroom and I’m passing buckets of blood. Lots of it. But I felt fine, nothing hurt. I didn’t have an upset stomach, I didn’t have any cramps, I didn’t have anything that to indicate that anything was really wrong other than the fact that I was passing copious amounts of blood. Because I’m smart this way, I go, ‘Eh, it’ll take care of itself.’ I didn’t even mention it to Mrs. B, because I was embarrassed. It’s not something I wanna talk about even though I’m doing it here in front of god knows how many people. So I think it’s gonna take care of itself and I go back to watching TV, about 45 minutes later it happens again. About a half hour after that, it happens again. Now we’re going into about 10, 10:30 at night and I’m thinking I’m just gonna go to bed because I’m sure when I wake up, it’s gonna be fine, I’m not worried about it. So I go to bed, about 12:30 I wake up and go to get up and I’m dizzy, I can’t stand up. We have a blood pressure monitor and it’s down in the kitchen because I usually use it in the mornings when I check my blood pressure every morning, just as a habit. [The kitchen is] two flights of stairs [down]. I go down, and my blood pressure is usually 135/140 over 85, maybe 90 something, but I drink a ton of coffee so I’m not alarmed with it. I check my blood pressure and it’s like 85 over 45. I’m thinking, ‘Fuck, that’s not good’ and I check it again, it’s the same thing. I’m thinking something’s wrong, so I go back upstairs and sit on the edge of the bed and I said ‘Lori, I think I need to go to the hospital.’ As soon as I said that, I blacked out, boom I went down. As soon as I hit the floor, I kinda came to and bounced back up again and now I’m making my way to the bathroom because I feel round five coming up. I’m bouncing off the walls, I’m staggering to the bathroom, I almost make it to the bathroom but I didn’t. By the way, it’s all blood, nothing nasty in there other than lots and lots of blood. It looks like somebody gutted a goat in our bathroom, it’s just blood everywhere. Lori, at this point, she’s just waking up. She knows nothing. So, she calls the ambulance. Now being the vein son of a bitch that I am, I’m thinking that I can’t let the ambulance come in and see me like this. I’m covered in blood, this is ugly, this is nasty. I can’t do this, so what do I do? I jump up to take a shower, as I get up to jump in the shower, now I’m blacking out and every time I’m blacking out, I’m bouncing my head off something and now my head is bleeding, I cut the bridge of my nose. I can only stay up for about 30, 45 seconds of the time, it was really stupid. Finally, Lori tells me to just get in the tub and wait for the ambulance, and I did. I don’t remember much else after that, but the moral of the story is just read the fucking directions. I go to the emergency room and they keep me there until about 4:30 in the morning and they sent me home, not passing any more blood. I still don’t know what was wrong, but I’m not bleeding anymore so they sent me home."
After trying to recover the next day, Bischoff noted that he started to get antsy about work, which prompted him to attempt to film a episode of Strictly Business with Jon Alba.
"I go home and now it’s Wednesday. I’m flat on my back all day Wednesday. Lori’s bringing me food, I’m kind of sucking it up. Wednesday evening, I’m starting to feel pretty good. I had a couple of scrambled eggs, go to bed, everything is fine. I wake up the next morning, feeling pretty good. I’m getting antsy, I got work to do, I’m trying to make things happen. Supposedly, I’m scheduled to do a Strictly Business episode with Alba at about Noon. I had some other shit to do, other people to call and I did all that stuff. So I sit down and I fire up my computer and I’m getting ready to do the show with Alba, and I said ‘I’m sorry brother, I just can’t do this. I just can’t.’ I just hit a wall. As soon as I disconnected, I blacked out, bounced my head off my desk and passed out on the floor. My studio is not in my house, it’s a guest house basically. While I’m in my office, Lori’s in the big house and I’m down here in my office passed out. When I passed out, I lose control of everything and it’s a mess again. When I come to [my senses], I called her and [told her] that I needed to go to the hospital again."
Bischoff then went on to tell the story about his second trip to the hospital, as well as a trip to a completely different state for a third hospital visit.
"She comes out, we go to the hospital, they put me in ICU. I was in the emergency room for a couple hours, they couldn’t figure out what was wrong. They put me in ICU and I was there for a couple days and the bleeding in my intestines was so bad, they couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. They tried to go up their with a scope and take a look around, but it was so much blood and they couldn’t tell where it was coming from. Then they have a discussion with me about how much of my intestines they’re going to surgically remove and I’m going ‘Oh no, no, we’re not doing any of this.’ But the doctor was pretty serious, ‘Look, here’s the deal, we do this or it may not turn out well for you. You’re losing a lot of blood.’ So anyway, they talked me into that the best they could. I'm still in Cody, Wyoming. The next day, they say ‘Okay, we’re gonna go in and take a look around but if we have to operate on you, you’re not gonna be awake to talk about it.’ They put me under, they go to go in, Lori’s waiting in the lobby and about ten minutes later they come out. Lori’s going, ‘Wait a minute, you’re done already?’ They say ‘He’s bleeding too badly, we can’t go in there and by the way, we’re out of blood. I had used all of the blood type that I was, A positive. I had used all of the blood that they had at the hospital in the county that I live in. So, they put me on a helicopter and flew me to Billings, Montana because they had better equipment and experienced surgeons up there and all that kind of stuff. Again, they fly me up there. The helicopter ride was awesome, it’s probably gonna cost me 50 or 60 grand, but it was a fun 40 minute ride you know. I make it to Billings where they have more blood and surgeons, i'm in the ICU for a day or two there and finally on Sunday morning, I wake up and I’m going ‘Hm, I feel pretty good actually. I’m kinda hungry.’ All throughout Sunday, I’m starting to feel a little better. Monday morning, I’m ready to go home, I pretty much stopped passing blood and everything was kinda normal. The doctor said ‘We’re gonna keep you one more day because if you drive home, it’s a two hour drive from Billings to Cody. If you drive home and something goes bad, that’s it. No way we can help you, you’re probably not gonna make it.’ That’s not what I want. I stuck around and they gave me one more test where I drank this solution and it goes all through you and put me through this cat scan machine. I take this as a precaution, they do that and say ‘We can’t find anything wrong with you.’ It was a miraculous healing. I stopped bleeding, they couldn’t find where the blood was coming from, it was a complete mystery. The doctor did tell me, 'You almost died twice. You almost died here, and you almost died in Cody.'"
Bischoff then went on to reveal that he had pieced together the fact that this was happening because of the Psyllium Husk supplement, which he ended up telling the doctors about near the end of his visit.
Fightful sends well wishes to Bischoff and his wife Lori during his recovery from the health incident.
Recently, Bischoff joked that AEW should book CM Punk vs. Goldberg at AEW All In. Fans can learn more here.
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