I Ain't Got Time to Bleed by Jesse Ventura

Author:Jesse Ventura [Ventura, Jesse]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: nonfiction
ISBN: 9780375504686
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2000-02-23T05:00:00+00:00

C H A P T E R 6

“THE MOUTH”

It happened that fast—the beginning of the end of my wrestling career. One day I was wrestling in Phoenix, two days later I was flat on my back in a San Diego hospital in intensive care, with doctors telling me not to move and calling Terry to tell her I could die at any minute.

That night in Phoenix, I had known I wasn’t at my best. Through the whole match, I couldn’t get enough air. I thought it was just because I was a Minnesotan, used to cold weather, and Arizona’s hot fall air was messing with my metabolism.

But it hit me again the next night when I was wrestling in Oakland. I was running out of breath in the ring; I couldn’t get enough air. I was getting through the matches, but it was becoming extremely hard to keep going.

At that time I was hanging with Big John Studd, and he and I were planning to go to a gym to work out. But I told him, “John, I’m gonna go to bed; I’m not feeling good.”

The next morning, we were scheduled to fly to San Diego, my last match before the start of the big program with Hulk Hogan for the title. John and I were going to go to the gym again. That was the routine: You flew into the city in the morning, then checked into your hotel, worked out, and rested and ate until it was time for your match in the evening. That morning, we checked into a Travelodge and were going to go to Jack Lambert’s gym. Again, I told John to go on without me, and I went to bed.

I woke up at about one in the afternoon, drenched in sweat. Whenever I took a deep breath, I’d get hit with such severe pain in my lungs that I couldn’t stand it. I’d had pneumonia a few years earlier, and I thought I was getting it again, because it was the same kind of severe ache in my lower back and searing pain in my lungs. But even when I’d had full-blown pneumonia, I was in such good shape that when I breathed into one of those devices that test your lung capacity, I took it all the way to the top. So when I checked myself into Sharp Cabrillo Hospital that Saturday afternoon, I didn’t think I had all that much to worry about. I told them who I was and that I thought I was having another bout of pneumonia.

The doctor did some preliminary tests on me, then came back into the room with a grave expression on his face. He told me, “I want you to sit in that chair, and I don’t want you to move—sit and do not move!”

This doctor was an ex-marine, and I had told him that I’d been a SEAL, so we had a special understanding between us. I looked him in the eye and said, “C’mon, Doc, give it to me.

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