Dean Ambrose returned to the WWE earlier this year in August after being out since December last year with a triceps injury.

He initially had been given a timeframe of three to six months, but his time out was extended after he had setbacks during his rehabilitation. 

During a recent interview with Greg Luca of McAllen, Texas’ The Monitor, The Lunatic Fringe explained why his return to the WWE ring took longer than initially expected.

He revealed a scary story where he almost died due to MRSA and a staph infection in the region of his triceps injury.

He said: “It was a long, long period of time. Much longer than would have been anticipated.

"It was just one nightmare after another. It was a pretty challenging period of time to go through. I ended up having two different surgeries. I had this MRSA, Staph infection. I nearly died.

"I was in the hospital for a week plugged up to this antibiotic drip thing, and I was on all these antibiotics for months that make you puke and crap your pants."

Ambrose noted that his triceps wasn’t healing correctly, discovering he had Dusty elbows. This is when a bursa sac of fluid occurs on your elbow from banging it repeatedly on the wrestling mat or another surface.

Many wrestlers get this type of injury, but by the time Dean had his first surgery, his triceps was already starting to atrophy and look weird.

"I wasn’t able to flex my triceps for a really long time. And then the first surgery didn’t really, something went wrong in the process. Probably due to that infection. It’s kind of hard to say when that really even got in my body. 

He continued: "By the time I got that second surgery, it was March, I think. My arm was so shrunken and skeletal that it was weird. I hadn’t been able to move it or flex it in so long that I was starting to get scared I wasn’t ever going to get it back."

Ambrose stated his timeframe of recovery went from three or four months, to six months minimum after they found traces of an infection during the first surgery.

He then noticed the injury wasn't healing correctly, so he went back for just a checkup, only to find out he required another surgery.

He said: "I ended up just moving to Birmingham just to play it safe and be with the doctor and best rehab guys. As soon as I got out of the second one, I was flying home, grabbing my dog, turned right back around, got in the truck and drove to Birmingham.

"I just stayed there for two and a half or three months until they felt like I was pretty good. Once the MRSA really got out of my system, I was working out twice a day. Rehabbing twice a day on top of that in Birmingham.

"Doing everything possible to try to get my arm working again, and once I started to come back, I started to make a lot of progress over the summer. So I’m feeling good now.”

Thankfully, Ambrose is all good now and back to wrestling for WWE, but it could have been a lot worse for The Lunatic Fringe.

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