Death Clutch - Brock Lesnar [65]
The Bismarck doctors knew who I was, and what I did for a living. That means they knew that cutting me open would end my career, and they did not want to do that if it could be avoided. The doctors made a decision.
They said I had eight hours. If the medication appeared to be working on the infection, they would give me some more time. If it wasn’t working, they would be forced to recommend immediate surgery to remove a large chunk of my colon.
I spent the next seven hours in the hospital with a 104.3-degree fever. The doctors started discussing the surgery. It was becoming a life-or-death situation.
With fifteen minutes left to go, my fever finally broke. I didn’t have to have the radical surgery. I got a reprieve.
If the doctor who made the decision to wait hadn’t been on duty that day when I arrived, I would have been using a colostomy bag for several months, and would have had to undergo several surgeries. He made a brilliant decision. He and his twenty-eight years of GI experience saved my life . . . he gave me a chance to have a good life with my wife and children. I’ll never forget that. Thank you, Dr. Bruderer. I will forever remember you for what you did for me and my family.
Although I had avoided immediate surgery, it didn’t change the fact that I still had a hole in my stomach, and that it was slowly killing me. I was dying.
I spent the next eleven days in the hospital with no food or liquids. All I had was an IV solution and a ton of pain medication. I was living in a fog.
When I looked around, all I saw was my IV tubes and my wife sitting by my bedside. Rena tells me my lawyers were on the phone with her constantly, but I didn’t know that. She tells me they had been in touch with Dana White, who offered to have a UFC helicopter take me to the Mayo Clinic. She tells me Marty was on his way. I didn’t know that either. How could I know anything? I was so medicated I couldn’t stay awake, and when I was awake, all I could think of was that I was dying.
One time when I woke up, I got ahold of my cell phone, and I started calling everyone . . . my managers, attorneys, trainers, you name it . . . and I fired all of them. If your number was on my cell phone, I either quit working with you or fired you.
Once I came to, I put those relationships back together. I was an ornery cuss when I was sick, and every now and then I have a good laugh about what I did from my hospital bed. It’s funny, but not a lot of people on the other end of those phone calls have a sense of humor about it, even to this day. Oh well. I hope they get over it somehow. I’ll admit, I was in a pretty bad mood, and had no idea what I was doing during most of those calls.
Rena just kept telling me to focus on positive thoughts, but while I was there in that hospital bed, I decided to retire. One of the people I called on the phone was Dana White. He’s the one guy who laughs about the calls from me when I was in the hospital. That’s just Dana’s personality. I like that about him, because I’m sure he got an earful from me that week and a half I was laid up. I do remember telling Dana I was retiring. We both laugh about that conversation now. Not so much then. But certainly now.
I wanted to live. I wanted to get out of the hospital, and be with my family. Everything else was secondary to me. I was going to be a farmer. No kidding. Everyone still asks me if I was scared about losing my UFC career, never having a chance to see my title reign the whole way through. I wasn’t that concerned about it, because when I was in that hospital bed, I had already resigned myself to the notion of being Farmer Brock.
At the end of my eleven-day hospital stay, I was wheeled out to my car because I was too weak to walk. And that’s when it really hit me. Four months ago I was invincible, and now I’m in a wheelchair. I looked over at Rena and I said, “The world’s baddest man, huh?,” and I laughed.
Getting home that day