Ryan Fischer, the dog walker Lady Gaga hailed as a hero after he was shot while walking her three French bulldogs last month, was discharged from the hospital on Monday. In Fischer’s lengthy health update though, he revealed that he suffered complications and required invasive surgery. His doctors discovered that his lung collapsed after he was shot. Fischer was walking Gaga’s dogs when two men attacked him, making off with two of Gaga’s three dogs. The missing dogs, Koji and Gustav, were later recovered.
Fischer shared a video of himself changing from his hospital gown to regular clothes while Carly Simon’s “Coming Around Again” played in the background. His long caption began with a quote from a hospital staffer, “Recovery isn’t a straight line.” The staffer told Fischer during one of his first walks after he was transferred from the ICU to another room. The comment “felt like a gift,” Fischer wrote. “Everything did at that point. I cracked a smile staring at the abstract alligator, steadied myself on the IV pole and his arm, and began walking again.”
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At first, Fischer thought he was “recovering remarkably fast,” but then learned things were not going as well as he hoped. After he had a chest tube removed, there was a “strange hissing and glugging coming from my chest every time I took a breath begged to differ with that assessment.” He was later rushed back to the emergency room because his lung collapsed. The doctors and nurses who treated him were the same ones who helped him when he was first admitted after the shooting.
“It became quite clear that my lung was not healing, and the bullet wound had scarred my tissue like a burn,” he wrote, reports Entertainment Tonight. “It could take months, if ever, for the hole to seal. Lunches of grilled cheese and tomato soup and art walks blurred into one until the day came to remove portions of my lung.” Fischer did have the surgery and is now out of the hospital. However, the “triggers are real” and he learned that “working through trauma is way more than dealing with one unfortunate moment in life.”
Fischer was attacked in February when he was walking Gaga’s three French bulldogs Koji, Gustav, and Asia. The attackers shot Fischer once and stole Koji and Gustav. Asia escaped and was quickly recovered by police. Gaga, who is still in Europe filming a movie, offered a $500,000 reward for Gustav and Koji’s return. A few days later, a woman, unrelated to the suspects, found the two dos and returned them. Gaga’s team told TMZ they plan to pay the woman the reward.
