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Here are Kurt's first reactions after his surgery:
Kurt Angle isn’t quite ready to announce his return date yet, although he says he’s feeling much better since having surgery on April 11.
Instead of having spinal fusion – the way seven other WWE Superstars have – which would have forced him to miss one year, Angle elected to have a less invasive procedure, performed by Dr. Hae-Dong Jho in Angle’s hometown of Pittsburgh.
“I’m really happy with the surgery,” Angle said.
He was feeling good enough, in fact, that he attended Tuesday’s SmackDown! taping (he did not appear on the show). But he said he’s been feeling a tingling sensation in his left arm.
“That could be due to swelling in my neck,” he said. “I talked to the doctor and he said, ‘Let it heal. It’ll be alright.’ What I think it is is a lot of swelling in my neck which is causing pressure on my nerve; I don’t have a pinched nerve or bone spurs anymore. When the swelling goes away, I’ll feel much better.
“If it’s not the case, we might have to do something else.”
Some of the Superstars that had spinal-fusion surgery, including Lita and Rhyno, also experienced a pins-and-needles feeling in their arms and hands as they recovered. For them, it was just part of the healing process and it eventually went away.
But since Angle’s the first Superstar to have this procedure, he doesn’t have anyone with whom to “compare notes.” Plus, his symptoms – problems with four vertebrae and two discs, and a bruised spinal cord – were the most severe of any of the Superstars, except Stone Cold Steve Austin.
He said he’ll have to wait and see whether the surgery worked for him.
“The doctor said it’s going to take a good three, four or five weeks to get my strength back,” he said. “He might not have fixed it. I don’t know yet. We won’t know for another month. I pray to God that it works out well because now the wrestlers have an option besides fusion, which limits your working ability because you don’t have as much flexibility in your neck.”
On the plus side, Angle said he’s been feverishly rehabilitating his left hamstring, and that today it’s fine. “I get a little pain here and there,” he said. “Once you tear it once, you’ve got that scar tissue. You’ve got to keep stretching through it.” Angle tore the hamstring 20 seconds into his match with Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania XIX, and he said it was actually causing him more discomfort during the match than his neck.
While it’s too early for Angle to set a timetable for his return to the ring, he’s already thrilled that he had Jho’s procedure because he’s not in any pain. Jho made only a small incision in the front of Angle’s neck, next to his throat. That incision is already barely noticeable, said Angle, who didn’t even have to wear a neck brace.
“The first thing I did when I woke up (after surgery) was, I moved my neck back,” he said. Before surgery, when he would do that, he’d “have this grueling, sharp, stabbing pain in the back of my spinal cord.” But the pain was gone. “I said, ‘Man, this is a miracle.’”
Since February, when the circulation to his left shoulder and arm were cut off, Angle had been in so much pain that he had been prescribed valium. It was the only way he could sleep.
“I’m not having the pains anymore,” he said. “It’s not that hard for me to get comfortable. I like to sleep on my stomach, and when I had the injury, I couldn’t because it pushed my head back, which caused the sharp pain. Now I’m sleeping great.”
Angle laughed and added that he hated not being able to sleep on his stomach. “I think it’s because I never like to be on my back because of amateur wrestling,” he said.
Angle said he also considers the surgery a miracle because he was able to get back in the gym the day after the operation.
“To have this doctor pry on your neck one day, and then the neck day I’m doing heavy bench pressing…and running on the treadmill for 30 minutes straight, that in itself was a miracle,” he said.
After WrestleMania, he said he had only about a third of the strength in his left arm that he has in his right. But now he says it’s closer to 70 percent.
He also said that the only atrophy he’s suffered is in his left hand – the small muscle between the index finger and the thumb. “I don’t have that anymore in one hand,” he said. “They say it might come back. But if that’s the only atrophy I have, I’m pretty happy with it.”
Angle is actually a bit concerned that he may have been training too hard since the surgery, and that that’s what’s causing the tingling sensation in his arm. Angle’s kicking himself not learning from his mistakes.
“I’ve always thought of ways of training around my injuries because I always felt like if I wasn’t training, someone somewhere around the world was training harder than me,” he said.
Angle has had this philosophy since junior high, when he broke his arm, but returned to practice a day later, wearing a cast but not giving the injury time to heal. He ended up breaking his arm repeatedly and being forced to wear a cast 23 weeks instead of four.
Likewise, one year before the Olympics, he severely broke his hand, but was back to working out the next evening. And when he had arthroscopic surgery on his knee last December, he was walking around two days later.
“I’m just hoping I didn’t cause (this latest injury) to turn south and go the opposite way,” he said. “I probably should have taken it a little more slowly. Now I’m in a situation where I have to step back a little bit. I need to sit back and relax and not be so stubborn about going to the gym.”
Angle said he increased the intensity of his training when his symptoms kicked in in February. As a result, he’s dropped 22 pounds and today he tips the scales at 228. He said he regrets letting himself get up into the 250-pound range and believes that may have been a factor in his recent injuries. “I’d like to remain 230 or under,” he said. “I think it helps with my legs. I think it’s going to help with my neck. Although 20 pounds doesn’t seem like a lot, it can take its toll on your body.”
Angle flew to Nashville, Tenn., for Tuesday’s SmackDown! taping because WWE officials wanted to see how he was doing, and because he wanted to offer instruction to some of the younger Superstars.
“I’m really trying to help out (John) Cena,” he said. “I think he could be a major player, and I’m trying to be there for him and give him advice, like a few of the guys did for me when I started. I see a lot of potential with John, so I’m really looking to make him the next big player.”
Because Angle’s no longer in any pain, he was a bit tempted to try out a few wrestling moves.
“I got in the ring just to sit and watch,” he said. “I was going to start doing some stuff, but I thought, ‘You know what? Somebody’s going to slap me if I start getting in the ring and wrestling.’ But could I have? Yeah, I definitely could have. I’ve got to learn how to take it easy.”
Source: WWE.com |
