Mojo Raley made an appearance on The Sessions with Renée Paquetteto discuss a wide range of topics.
During it, he opened up on his battle with COVID-19:
“I got rocked pretty hard by it. The first few days weren’t so bad. It was like the on and off spotty fever, the chills, and whatnot. I’m not sure what happened from there. Myself and the doctors have a couple of hunches, but things spun out of control.”
“My fever spiked to 104. I was overheating. It was so crazy. I remember taking an ice cold shower trying to get my body temp down, and the freezing cold water would touch the top of my head, and by the time it got down to my neck, it was boiling hot.”
The former WWE star ended up going to the hospital as a result and they couldn’t do much for him.
“I went to the hospital. They checked me out. They took my temperature. They really didn’t have anything for me to do but sit in a cold room by myself to bring my fever down, but after that, I started developing this cough and these breathing issues. I was coughing so bad that the blood vessels in my eyes burst, so my eyes were bloodshot and looked insane.”
“I just couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t get a full breath. I would get these little half breaths where the air would get to here and stop before it gets up to a place where I could actually get it in. I couldn’t lay on my back. I couldn’t lay on my side. I couldn’t wear T-shirts because it would suffocate me, that extra pressure on my lungs. It was just awful.”
He ended up sleeping in a chair and had issues getting rest.
“I had to learn to sleep sitting forward in a chair. I’m already the world’s worst sleeper, so these things didn’t help. I was having to take Nyquil, Melatonin, and all these sleep aids combined together just to pass out for a little bit.”
“On certain days, it got so bad that I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t get enough air in to talk. It was like every breath for weeks and months was an act of process, something I had to actively do.”
“It was scary because I kept seeing the doctors. Everyone was like, ‘This is brand new. We don’t know what to tell you. We don’t know how to treat this. We can clearly see that your lungs are bad.’
“I went to the pulmonologist one day and they put me in this little cubicle. I did a breathing exam. I remember afterwards, on the way into the pulmonologist, I saw this 90 year old woman hobbling out on a walker. The doctor said, ‘Hey, did you by chance happen to see that older woman that walked out when you got here?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘Her lung strength is triple what yours is right now after this test’.”
He went to the doctors for over a year to do checkups every few weeks or months:
“It was literally over a year of going to the doctors every couple weeks, every month. It was them testing me and me failing miserably, and just going back home with I guess time eventually heals this and we’ll go from there.”
“Don’t get me wrong, the crazy part was some days I felt more or less fine. The only time I would notice it was if I worked out and really tried to push it. Then I could feel that I couldn’t get the air in like I used to. That was the frustrating part because I tried everything. What was causing me to have good days and bad days? Was it me working out too hard? Was it some sort of congestion or allergies? We still to this day have no idea. Sometimes it’s good and sometimes it’s bad, and no one can tell why.”