Dean Ambrose Reveals He Contract MRSA After Surgery: ‘I Nearly Died’

Dean Ambrose revealed that his extended layoff was due to complications from his arm surgery.

Dean Ambrose’s road back from injury was rockier than we could have known. 

In an interview with South Texas newspaper The Monitor, Ambrose revealed that he had two surgeries after tearing his triceps: one to fix the structural damage and another to clean out a MRSA staph infection. 

“It was just one nightmare after another. It was a pretty challenging period of time to go through,” Ambrose told the paper. “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 said that the infection was discovered during what he thought would be a  routine checkup. 

“I thought I was just going to turn right back around and get on a plane and go home, and they were like, ‘No, you have to go in again for surgery like right now,’” Ambose told The Monitor. “I was like, ‘Oh, no.’ I had just kind of got through all of the stitches and all of that stuff. It was a giant mess. I just kept having to start back from square one. 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.”

Ambrose was injured in December and initially believed he would only miss three or four months. He told The Monitor that after the surgery he was told the recovery timeline would be closer to six months. After the complications from the infection set him back, he ended up being out for nine months, finally making his return on the final Raw before SummerSlam.