Brock: Gut pain felt like shotgun blast & tabasco mixed with a pitchfork
In his autobiography “Death Clutch,” scheduled for release on May 28, Former UFC heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar describes his painful…
In his autobiography “Death Clutch,” scheduled for release on May 28, Former UFC heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar describes his painful stay at a Canadian hospital in late 2009 after falling ill on a wilderness holiday in western Manitoba.
Lesnar says he suffered because the hospital’s lone CT machine was broken, meaning doctors were unable to find out what was causing his stomach pain.
“I had no clue what was wrong, since they couldn’t get a picture of my stomach,” Lesnar writes. “The doctor didn’t know either. He was waiting on the part for the machine. Time was slipping away, and I was wondering if I would ever make it out of that hospital alive.
“I put my faith in the doctors at that hospital. I shouldn’t have. It almost cost me my career. It almost cost me my life.”
After a weekend on morphine with no CT scan, Lesnar asked for more pain medication and he and wife drove across the border to a hospital in Bismarck, N.D.
“I have a high threshold for pain, higher than most guys, and I couldn’t deal with it,” he says of the agony he felt during the four-hour ride.
“It felt like I had taken a shotgun blast to the stomach, and then someone poured in some salt and Tabasco and stirred it all up with a nasty pitchfork.”
At the Bismarck hospital, Lesnar said he got a CT scan in 20 minutes and was diagnosed shortly thereafter with diverticulitis, a digestive disorder. He spent the next 11 days in hospital but escaped surgery and returned to fight in the UFC.