Ric Flair’s recent health scare has forced him to completely change his lifestyle.
The 68-year-old retired professional wrestler was hospitalised with stomach pains in August, which was later diagnosed as the early stages of kidney failure and congestive heart failure due to years of alcohol abuse.
And although he has managed to narrowly avoid death in the past, after having been involved in a plane crash and being struck by lightning, nothing has "changed his life" quite like his most recent brush with death.
He said: "The airplane crash and the lightning didn’t change anything but the health scare has changed my life not drastically but it changed my lifestyle eventually.
"Number one I lost 43lbs when I was in the hospital, I had to learn how to walk again – I could stand but I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t even open a bottle of Gatorade or a Diet Coke. I was so weak and obviously it left me with issues that I had to deal with daily.
"Also the fact that I can’t drink anymore, which is really painful."
Ric was placed in a medically induced coma for 11 days after his fiancé Wendy Barlow had rushed him to the hospital, and was given a shockingly low 20 percent chance of survival.
He added: "Obviously I’m still self-conscious of what I went through and somehow in the course of every day I’m reminded of it by a television show I watch or someone asking me a question. It’s fresh in my mind. Ten days in life support is not where anyone wants to be with a 20 percent chance to live, which I wasn’t aware of."
The wrestling legend’s health scare was caused by his addiction to alcohol, but he insists that now he’s put down the bottle for good, he doesn’t miss the substance.
He told the Daily Star newspaper: "I don’t miss it at all. It’s funny, people ask me that, I don’t even think about it. I feel great, I’ve gained back 25lbs, I can work out now, I’m fine."
It comes after Ric claimed he couldn’t remember what happened to him after he was admitted into hospital.
Recalling the events, he said: "Well, I had been drinking. Shocker, yeah. A friend of mine came in town from Dallas and we had been out all day the day before and again in the morning before he flew back, and then that afternoon at around dinner time, I got this really sharp pain in my stomach.
"Wendy took me to the hospital, and my intestine had broken open. And that’s the last thing I remember. I don’t remember anything else. On Monday, they put me in an induced coma, and I stayed in that and on life support for 11 days. But I don’t remember any of it, I woke up to not remembering anything."
Ric Flair life changed after health scare
