On the latest edition of Talk Is Jericho the Demo God opened up about his health struggles in 2021, confirming that he did indeed have blood clots while he was out, but kept that information from the public as he did not want to cause a stir. Check out the full details, including Jericho’s trip to the hospital and how concerning it all was, below.
Confirms that blood clots are what he was dealing with health wise:
“I was in the hospital for blood clots, but it wasn’t just blood clots. It was actually a pulmonary embolism. Pulmonary embolism basically means blood clots in your lungs. That’s what I had, a whole bunch of them, which are now pretty much gone, all of them are gone, which is great to hear.”
The moment he knew something was wrong:
“At New Castle, when we were doing the show, I felt a little winded, which is weird because I’m never winded on stage. Sometimes you play a venue that has a low roof or something along those lines and you get super hot to where it’s hard to breathe, this was not that. The venue in New Castle was a nice place, high roof, not super hot, but I found myself searching and gasping for breath during songs to where it was hard to sing the lyrics. Didn’t think much of it, had a couple more shows in Ireland, but the same thing, kind of feeling short of breath,” he recalled. “In this time frame when I was feeling short of breath, I was talking to my doctor at home in Tampa who said it could be blood clots. She said, ‘When you get back home to Tampa, we’ll put you through cat scans and see where you’re at. If you start feeling short of breath, go to the hospital.’ I finished the show and the doctor said, ‘You have to go to the hospital right now.’ We were in Bournemouth and then headed to London for a press date.”
Recalls his trip to the hospital:
“The doctor came, took some blood, and I told him what was going on. He said, ‘we’re going to book you for a heart scan later on. We’ll take some blood and see what’s going on.’ I was having trouble walking. I’d be walking across the lobby and it felt like I was walking up a mountain. Huffing, puffing out of breath, something was really wrong. We canceled the press date. We were supposed to have a listening party, that got canceled due to COVID. We were supposed to do a sideline reporting thing at one of the soccer games, and it got canceled, I couldn’t do it. About an hour later, I got a call from the doctor who said, ‘you have blood clots, we can tell by the blood that we drew, you have to go directly to the hospital.’ Pretty scary. I’m in London, thousands of miles away from home, and now I have to go to the hospital. The cool thing was, the Rock Doc worked for a medical concierge. You pay and the service they do takes care of everything. Thank goodness because it’s December when COVID is still going on, the hospitals are full, and the last thing you want to do is go to a hospital and sit in the hallway. They were able to book me in a private hospital, get me in quicker, and away you go. I get to the hospital and I can barely walk. Walking across the lobby to get to the car to go to the hospital was a real task, it was terrifying. Three steps and I was huffing, puffing, my heart s pounding. ‘Something is really wrong here.’ The walk from the car to the hospital, same thing, might as well been a thousand miles if it was 100 feet, not even that, 50 feet. I walk inside, I’m trying to be cool, but I’m a little bit scared. I’m thinking, ‘Who knows what it is.’ You always think, ‘They’ll give me a shot and I’ll be on my way.’ Not necessarily the case.”
Says he was trying to keep things on the low:
“What do you do? What do you say? What do you tell people? How do you let them know that the singer of the band is in the hospital without causing a panic? We just let them know that the show was being canceled, I don’t remember what the reasoning for it was. We should have just said a COVID reason or whatever, but I don’t think we said anything,” he recalled. “My oxygen level is going down and that’s when they said, ‘we’re going to put you on oxygen tonight.’ They stuck the tube into my nose and that was a freakout because we’re going downhill, now there’s a tube up my nose and it’s getting worse and worse. We put out a statement that ‘Chris Jericho is in the hospital,’ which is probably the dumbest thing we could have done because now my kids find out about it, everyone is panicking, I’m getting all these calls. I got 500 texts from people who were concerned. I’m trying to keep it low, no one really knows why I was in the hospital to this day, that’s why I’m telling the story. I was always planning on doing it, but I was prompted by Tony’s announcement. I’m calling Tony, telling him. My dad, my wife, everyone else. Everyone is concerned, people are offering to come over to London to rescue me. The band is stuck on the bus at the O2 (Arena), they have nowhere to go and there are no shows.”
Talks putting on weight and then taking it off:
“Was I too big? Absolutely. Overweight? I guess. Ever out of shape cardio-wise? No, I was never blowing up. I gained weight after I worked with Kenny Omega at the Tokyo Dome. I was going through a Bruiser Brody phase and I thought, ‘I’m not tall like Brody, but I can be bigger than all these Japanese guys because the way things are now, I’m a taller guy.’ Japanese appreciate the bulkier physiques. ‘Let me get bigger and beat the crap out of everybody,’ which is what I did and it worked out to where I had three Tokyo Dome main events, I just never lost the weight. The pandemic comes and you don’t realize it.”
(H/T and transcribed by Fightful)