3/14/02
“The one thing that never
changes is – things change.”
This
will be short and to the point because if I go on too long I’m
begging for sympathy. I am not.
The last few months I’ve wrestled to break the boredom of
sitting around the house and feeling out of touch with the
business I love. Larry Zbyszko and I travel to Nashville for Bert
Pert Prentice every Saturday night and have a great time –
in the car and the arena. I’m a bad guy so the people boo me
and throw things, at the same time people love Larry and he is my
tag team partner!
The last several shows I’ve gotten extremely winded after
the matches and have had to rely on Larry to pick up my slack. I
hate that because of my work ethic and pride in my
professionalism. Increasingly, Larry has had to carry more and
more of the burden so I went to the doctor to see if something
was wrong. Several tests were run and all came back saying I was
fine. I wasn’t fine.
Finally, I went and got an EKG. That’s a test where they use
ultrasound technology to “see” your heart.
The results floored me.
I have 40 percent efficiency in my left ventricle with
regurgitation back into the heart. For those of us that don’t
speak cardiac, this means my heart isn’t getting new
oxygenated blood to my muscles and organs. That’s why I
couldn’t get in shape no matter how hard I tried.
The prognosis is I’ll live and my heart can get better, but
I can’t exert myself in short powerful bursts or I could
overtax my heart. That’s NOT a good thing. There was a time
when said the perfect way to die would be at the end of a
wrestling match after giving it my all. I could very easily make
that a reality right now, but have so much to live for.
If I had my choice now on how I go – it would be quietly
surrounded by my family. They’ve loved me and supported me
even when I couldn’t help them in the wrestling business.
That’s an inside joke. My cell phone rang all the time from
people who “just wanted to see how I was doing.” Now
that I can’t help anyone get a job- I’ve had to call
AT&T to see if my service was still active! So I’ve made
up my mind, I’ll honor the commitments I’ve made to
appear and then I’m done.
I’ve been very lucky to have a few true friends and true
fans – I love you for loving me. I want to be around for a
little while longer, if for no other reason to just be me and
make people around me mad. Oh, you didn’t know? I have a
gift for that!
Take care until next week,
Terry Taylor