Big Show Had Loads of Trouble With Recent Hip Surgery

Surgery is inherently complicated. But when you have a 7’0″ 400 lbs patient on the table, the difficulty level, and maybe the size of the surgical tools drastically increase. And for Big Show, his latest surgery provided a series of very sensitive complications.

In September of 2017, the 45-year old big man underwent surgery to resurface his right hip. We’re not exactly sure what that means, but it sounds like like a pretty technical job. Nonetheless, doctors and Big Show thought they had knocked out a successful operation, but earlier this year, Big Show began having some issues.

He opened up on the matter on Busted Open Radio:

“The surgery went really well, I had it done in New York. Got home, I was posting some stuff on Instagram three and a half weeks after surgery I was walking a mile, over a mile, things were coming along good. Then I got a fever. I found out that I had a surgical infection. Which is, I guess, the more I find out about these metal implants and stuff like that it’s quite high, there’s a high probability of it. I just got the unlucky draw,” he explained.

Things were so bad that Big Show needed another operation to clean out the infection.

“They had to go back in, cut me back open, take the joint apart, clean it, flush it – it’s a really bad thing, because right now I just have the resurfacing. If the infection had stayed or gotten any worse, they would have to cut the metal pieces out, put in what they call a cement joint which is an antibiotic friendly joint to the body, so the antibiotics would work for three months, then take that joint out and then do a full on hip replacement, which would have severely limited and pretty much ended my wrestling career if that would have happened,” said Big Show. “So instead, we did a very aggressive cleaning down here in Miami, some great doctors here at the Doctors Hospital, some of the guys that work with the Dolphins… worked with Dr. Chris Amman, WWE doctor, everybody was on board cause this was pretty aggressive therapy.”

The sensitive circumstance called for Big Show and his medical team to keep a close eye on his situation.

“I got a thing called a PICC line, which is basically an IV line that went in my left arm and went to my heart. And for seven weeks, I was walking around with an IV bag, three times a day, basically every eight hours it took three hours to dispense the meds… I used to call them feedings… cause the different medications had their times. It was almost like having a small baby in the house because you only got 3-4 hours of sleep or 3-4 hours to do anything before you had to feed the baby, change the diaper that kind of thing. But instead of a quick meal, like you’d do with a kid, this would take 2-3 hours,” he said.

Thankfully, the future WWE Hall of Famer is back on track to making a full recovery.

“Things right now are looking pretty good,” he said. “This will be touch and go for probably another 6-8 months to make sure that it doesn’t come back, because the more I learned about infections, they’re very aggressive, almost sentient diseases the way they adapt to certain antibiotics.”

The brush with disaster looks to have energized Big Show and he sounds to be optimistic about his path.

“We’ve done everything we can to keep the joint clean, so… my benchings back up, my strength’s back up, I’ve dropped almost 27 pounds since January 2nd already back in the gym, so I’m back to feeling strong – I’m feeling right,” said Big Show.