Wrestling legend Bobby Fulton recently discussed his experience battling throat cancer in an interview with Bill Apter of SK Wrestling.
The legendary tag team wrestler disclosed that he started experiencing problems in 2017 but his doctor kept insisting that nothing was wrong until he started spitting up blood. He said,
“Probably started in about 2017. I started having a lot of problems on this side of my throat. And it felt like razor blades I swallowed. I went to the doctor, he, he kept saying, ‘There’s nothing wrong with you, you’re fine. Let me give you a shot and you’ll be all right next week.’ But finally, it got to where Bill, I was actually splitting up blood. Whenever you’re spitting up blood, there’s a serious problem.”
“I went into my doctor, and I said I need a reference to get to see an ENT specialist, ear nose and focus specialist. He said, ‘I refuse to give you a recommendation, a referral. You’re not going.’ About that time Bill, I jumped up in his face and got about this far from his nose [gestures]. Me and him was in a pretty heavy argument. And his office manager said, ‘I will send the referral now.’”
Fulton went on to reveal that after getting a referral from his doctor, he was eventually diagnosed with cancer and underwent radiation and chemotherapy. He added,
“So, I’ve got the referral, I got in there. They told me I had cancer. I had a tumor from up to my ear and my throat that’s the size of a baked potato. And they told my son, my son Jeremy was with me there. He’d come up and would sit with me… but long story short, I went in. I had treatments, I had radiation. I had chemotherapy.”
The multi-time tag team champion also had health complications and had to have a safety spring installed in his throat to hold his arteries together.
“I have a safety spring now in my throat because after all that went on, I was sitting at home one morning. I woke up with a mouth full of blood, I spit it out I didn’t know that the artery had ruptured in my throat. Well, by the time I got to the hospital, which was an hour away, they said, “What Life Flight did you come in on?’ I said, ‘I didn’t come in on a Life Flight.’ They said, ‘Well, when that busted, you only have six minutes to live.’ And I lived an hour after that.”
Bobby Fulton also noted that after radiation and chemotherapy of such magnitude, his doctor told him that it’s a miracle he is still alive. He said,
“And then the other procedure done with this slinky spring is now my throat, holding my arteries together. I just realized recently from meeting with my doctor that that I have been given the limitation of [what] a human being can get with radiation. They gave me so much, they said, ‘We had to kill you to heal you.’ So, I have — I don’t know if you can see it or not. but I have scars all around me here with radiation and the chemotherapy. And Bill, I’ve almost died about six times. Or should have been, people said, ‘You should have been dead,’ and the doctor said, ‘You should have been dead.’ By the grace of God, I’m here.”