William Regal Explains Why He Was Once Given 24 Hours To Live

William Regal Explains Why He Was Once Given 24 Hours To Live

William Regal’s interview with Talk Is Jericho was released today, and in it he revealed that he was once given just 24 hours to live.

Later on, Regal went into detail about the story, detailing why he was told that, as well as doctors nearly amputating his leg.

He explained:

“The last time my family were all together was 2018 for Christmas, and I was in hospital for eight weeks. I was given at one point 24 hours to live, I had sepsis in my leg, they were gonna cut my leg off. This is January 4, 2019. So I insisted on going home for Christmas, because you know I’ve been through a lot. I had a hell of year 2018… sorry, it’s a bit, like, I usually just tell people, but now I’m sat with you and I’m comfortable, things hit you a little bit…

“November, they send me for a scan, because I’m not… my legs are swelling, and they do a scan of my abdomen. And luckily, fortunately for me, there’s a cardiologist in the room, and this lady saved my life. She went, ‘Hang on a minute, there’s something above that, that doesn’t look right. But they couldn’t scan there again because you’ve already been…’ – this was Friday – ‘…already been injected, so, we need to do another scan, but we can’t do it now, because you can only do one’, because of the fluid.

“Come back Monday, I go back Monday, I get a scan that I’ve never had before. Some type of scan. I went home, within an hour of me being in the house, my cardiologist called me going, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry’. I’m going, ‘Why? Why? Why?’. He said, ‘We should have thought about this years ago’, he’s telling me all these things, ‘It doesn’t pick up on a regular scan’, I’m going, ‘What? What? What?’. He said, ‘You’ve probably got less than six months to live. What had happened was, this sack around my heart had completely calcified, my heart – it looks like a goose egg. It was completely constricted, it had just grown into a solid lump of rock.

“They’ve cut me open, and there’s wrapping on it at the beginning, he’s wrapping at this goose egg with a scalpel and he’s going ‘tap tap tap’, and then three hours later, you can see where he’s peeled it all off, you can see a completely beating heart.

“If they didn’t get this off now, I would have six months to go. So they had to take it off, right, it’s called a Pericardectomy, it’s a very rare operation. There’s only a few people that can do that. Fortunately, WWE got me a doctor in Atlanta that can do this for me.

“I was eight weeks in hospital after that, this is November 23 I think. I insisted on coming out at Christmas because our Bailey (his son) was back from England and it was right before he went to Japan. He was supposed to start in Japan in April. And our Bailey come back, and he was home. He was living in England and wrestling in England, and he come home, and I went, ‘I’m coming home for Christmas’, for the first time in my life, I always used to shrug stuff off, I thought, ‘I’m not gonna make it. I’m gonna die’.

“This is about four weeks in, I had fluid leaking constantly out of my legs, I was swole up like the Michelin Man, I was laying on a bed for about four-and-a-half weeks, I had a drip in both arms, I couldn’t move, literally couldn’t move, I was cramping up because they were giving me diuretics to try and take the fluid out, but cutting my sodium down, and I was just cramping up from head to toe, but I insisted on going home. I had to struggle out and have a nurse come in.

“By New Year’s… I woke up in bed, my wife’s trying to do her best, and I’m insisting on staying out of hospital, but they’re going, ‘No you’ve got to go’. I was screaming the house down. I just cramped from literally my eyelids to my toes and I fell out of bed and on the floor. My wife couldn’t move me, our Bailey come in and me other son, and picked me up off the floor, and (audibly tears up), and they got an ambulance and I was just completely cramped up, got me back in hospital.

“So finally I got through, and the only way I can remember it is, I thought I was gonna die. It was really bad. And it was January 4, somehow I got sepsis in my leg. Again, this is all things that happen to me. I don’t believe in anything, but something gets me through this stuff. January 4, my wife gets a call, 3 O’Clock in the morning, this is a Sunday night because it wasn’t the normal doctors – weekend doctors, ‘You’re husband’s got sepsis in his leg, we’re gonna cut his leg off, and he’s got probably 24 hours to live if we don’t’.

“It’s madness. This doctor who was looking after me, his wife is a doctor, she was on call, she overheard – because they’re not allowed to talk to each other about cases – she overheard a conversation that there’s a fella who’s had a Pericardectomy…

“She heard this, and called her husband at home, woke him up and said, ‘They’re about to chop his leg off’, he called them and said, ‘Inject him with this, this, this, this and this’, and somehow, that saved… because they weren’t gonna do it. They were gonna chop my leg off. That worked, and saved my leg.”

If you use this transcription or any portion of it please credit WrestleTalk.com and link to this page.

Terrifying stuff indeed, but thankfully Regal now claims he is in the ‘best health’ he’s been in in years, and is working as the manager for Bryan Danielson and Jon Moxley following his WWE release back in January.

Speaking of Regal in AEW, here are 7 potential prodigies in AEW that could join his alliance.

To make sure you stay updated with all the latest wrestling news, add WrestleTalk.com to your Google Discover feed and follow us on Twitter!

2 years ago by Connel Rumsey

@connel1405

Trending

Get the latest wrestling news straight to your inbox

By submitting this form, you are consenting to receive marketing emails from WrestleTalk