In a recent episode of his 83 Weeks Podcast, WWE Hall of Famer Eric Bischoff discussed several topics and opened up about how a recent health scare almost led to him passing away on two different occasions.

“This is a crazy story, I’m pretty healthy, I’m actually very healthy, I hardly ever get sick, the occasional cold and 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 10. 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. 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 and when I wake up, I feel horrible. Anyways, 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 all about this stuff, and one of the things I read, using a supplement like metamucil, or in this case Psyllium Husk, so I’m thinking I’m going to add this Psyllium Husk to my repertoire, even though I eat a lot of fibre 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, 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 30 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, because 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, because I’m drinking a smoothie because I’m a healthy s.o.b., I’m drink this thing that’s going to make me even healthier right. I’m feeling food about myself, this is like 3 O’Clock in the afternoon, so dinner times 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 going to clean this up a bit, because it’s not the most pleasant thing to talk about, I get up, 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 want to talk about, even though I’m doing it here in front of God knows how many people, so I think it’s going to take care of itself and I go back to watching TV, and about 45 minutes later, it happens again and 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 going to go to be, because I’m sure when I wake up, it’s going to be fine, I’m not worried about it, so I go to bed and 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. 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 and I’m thinking f***, that’s not good and I check it again and 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 kind of 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 s.o.b. 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 and 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 of something, and now, my head is bleeding, I cut the bridge of my nose and I can only stay up for about 30 to 45 seconds at a 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 f***ing 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. 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, I go to bed, everything is fine, I wake up the next morning feeling pretty good, I’m getting antsy, I’ve 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 s*** to do, other people to call and I did all that stuff, 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 came to, I called her and told her that I needed to go to the hospital again.

She comes, we go to the hospital and they put me in ICU, I was in the emergency room for a couple of hours and they couldn’t figure out what was wrong, they put me in ICU and I was there for a couple of days and the bleeding in my intestines was so bad that they couldn’t figure out where it was coming from, they tried to go up there with a scope, and take a look around, but there 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 and was like 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 anyways, they talked me into that the best that they could, I’m still in Cody, Wyoming and the next day they say okay, we’re going to go in and take a look around, but if we have to operate on you, you’re not going to be awake to talk about it.

They put me under, they go to go in, Lori’s waiting in the lobby and about 10 minutes later they come out and Lori’s going, wait a minute, you’re done already and they said, 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 going to cost me fifty or sixty grand, but it was a fun forty-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 hmm, I feel pretty good actually, I’m kind of 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 kind of normal and the doctor said we’re going to 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 going to 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 they 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 her and you almost died back in Cody.”

The full episode is available at this link.