Chris Jericho opens up about his health issues in 2021 that led to him being hospitalized

During his Talk is Jericho podcast, Chris Jericho opened up about his health issues during a United Kingdom tour with Fozzy in late 2021. Jericho talked about having shortness of breath during shows and how it led to him being hospitalized…

“I did have what is called a pulmonary embolism. Back on December 7th, I believe, of 2021. I found this out when I was in London, England. I’ve been waiting a while to tell the story. I kind of wanted to wait until some things were settled and figure it out, and make sure that everything is back to where it needs to be, and is back to normal, and is back to the new normal. Pulmonary embolism basically means blood clots in your lungs, and that’s what I had, a whole bunch of them, which are now pretty much gone. All of them are gone, which is great to hear.”

“I got to the hospital and I can barely walk. I mean walking across the lobby to get to the car to go to the hospital was a real task. It was terrifying. Like after three steps, I was just huffing and puffing and my heart was pounding. You know something is really, really wrong here. Then the walk from that car to the hospital, same thing. It might as well have been 1000 miles when it was 100 feet, if it was even 50 feet.”

“I was cleared and finally able to fly home. After coming home, I had to do more tests. I got on a scale that measures everything. One of the things that is measured is your visceral fat. Well what’s visceral fat? Visceral fat is the fat that surrounds your organs. He said you need to lose some visceral fat. Well, how do you lose visceral fat? Well, you lose weight. When I went in there, I was 241 pounds. Now looking back, was I too big? Absolutely. Was I overweight? I guess, but never ever out of shape cardio wise. No, I never was blowing up or anything like that. But I gained some weight after I worked with Kenny Omega at the Tokyo Dome. I was going through a Bruiser Brody phase, and I thought, well, I can be bigger than all these Japanese guys just because of the way things are now. I’m one of the taller guys. Everyone’s a little bit smaller. The Japanese appreciate the bulkier physiques. So let me just get a little bit bigger and just beat the crap out of them, which is what I did. It worked out to the point where I had three Tokyo domain events. I just never lost weight. Then the pandemic comes and you know, you just don’t even realize it. So I went to the medical weight loss clinic and followed the diet. I wanted to lose 10 pounds. I lost 11 in the first week, and I thought, well, let me just stick with this and see how it goes. I currently weigh 209 pounds.”

“I wasn’t able to wrestle because I was on blood thinners, and after a few weeks, I went down to five milligrams twice a day. So that’s good. I also did some very extensive research on athletes who are on blood thinners. I found a couple guys in the NBA and a couple guys in the NFL, and found these guys are able to play and coexist on blood thinners. What they do is they just don’t take a blood thinner 36 hours before the event because it’s not a matter of getting cut open and bleeding, it’s a matter of your blood being thinner. If you hit your head or something, you could hemorrhage. So I was very cognizant of that. After talking to Doc Sampson with AEW, who’s our team doctor, and just keeping an eye on everything, and once again, now all of these exams that I’m going for, they’re all coming up great. So then it’s just a matter of when I can go back to the ring.”

“I also found something very interesting as well. When I went to the hematologist who once again checks to see what could be causing these blood clots, she came back and said that I had a factor V gene in my blood and that basically contributes to blood clots. You could have a two sided factor V, which means that both parents have it. But mine is a half gene and not a full one, which means I may not have to take blood thinners forever.”