On the latest “83 Weeks” podcast, WWE Hall of Famer Eric Bischoff talked about a recent health scare. Here is a summary of what he said:
Bischoff said he is in very good health. He was reading about blood sugar as he is hypo-glycemic. If he has a candy bar, he will pass out. He read where using psyllium husks is beneficial even though he has no issues in that regard and he eats a lot of fiber. He looked at the directions and it said the recommended use is 1-3 tablespoons. He thought if 1-3 is the recommended amount for the average person, then he should take 4-5. He didn’t read the rest of the directions that said don’t start out with the maximum dose right away, but rather, work your way up to it.
Bischoff put a few big scoops of psyllium husks and threw it in his smoothie at 3PM. Later in the evening, he got up to go to the bathroom and he started passing lots of blood. Nothing hurt, he had no cramps, and there was no indication that anything was wrong other than he was passing a lot of blood. He didn’t mention it to his wife. Over the next hour and a half, it happened two more times. He went to bed thinking when he woke up, everything would be fine. About 12:30AM, he got up and he was dizzy. He went downstairs to check his blood pressure and it was 85/45, so he knew something was wrong. He went back upstairs realizing he needed to go to the hospital, and as soon as he went upstairs, he blacked out. When he hit the floor, it woke him back up and he made his way to the bathroom, and he started bleeding again.
Bischoff’s wife, who knew nothing about his condition beforehand because he didn’t tell her, found him and called the ambulance. Bischoff wanted to get in the shower as he didn’t want this to be covered on the internet with blood all over himself. As he went to the shower, he blacked out again. He banged his head which started bleeding and he cut the bridge of his nose.
The ambulance came and he went to the emergency room. They didn’t know what was wrong. At 4:30 AM, he wasn’t passing any more blood, so they sent him home.
The next day, he was flat on his back. That evening, he started feeling good. The next morning, he was getting ready to do the podcast and he told co-host Jon Alba that he couldn’t do it as he wasn’t feeling well. As soon as he disconnected, he blacked out and bounced his head on his desk and fell to the floor. When he awoke, he called his wife to say he needed to go to the hospital. He was in the ER for a couple hours and they couldn’t figure out what was wrong as he was losing a lot of blood. They put him in the I.C.U for a couple days. They put a scope in him, but the bleeding in his intestines were so bad, they couldn’t figure out where it was coming from.
They had a discussion with him about how much of his intestines they were going to remove and they would have to give him a bag. After much convincing, Bischoff agreed. The next day, they were going to go in and take a look around and if they had to operate on him, they would do it and he wouldn’t be awake to talk about it. They put him under. Ten minutes later, they couldn’t go in there and they were out of blood. He had used up all his blood type at the hospital or the county where he lived. They put him in a helicopter and life-flighted him to Billings, MT because they had better equipment and surgeons to do this type of surgery.
He made it to Billings where they had a blood supply. He was there for a day or two. He woke up Sunday morning and he said he felt good. On Monday, he thought he needed to get out of there because he felt good and he stopped passing blood. The doctor told him he needs to stay because if something goes bad on the 2-hour drive back home, he’s probably not going to make it. He stuck around and they did one more test. After the test, they said they couldn’t find anything wrong with him. He stopped bleeding. They couldn’t find where the blood was coming from. It was a complete mystery.
Bischoff thought it wasn’t a mystery and he knew what happened. Bischoff said what psyllium does is when it gets into your system, it takes all the moisture in your intestines, it expands like a ball of jell, and it passes through your system to clean you out. When he took those three heaping tablespoons, it tore a lot of stuff up that it came into contact with. What he learned is the lining of the intestines are so vascular that it heals very quickly, so whatever he tore up in the course of the 24 hours, healed. He told the doctor he’s pretty sure this is what caused this as this was the only thing he did differently. The doctor told him he almost died twice. He almost died in Cody and he almost died here. Bischoff said he is okay now.
