11. Specifics Of His Injury
Going further into detail on the match where he suffered the stinger, he says that after the suicide dive he felt a little jolt down his arm but that it was no big deal. However, after he performed his top rope dropkick he couldn't get up, and that was scary. Bryan points out that Orton has a temper and was angrily asking "Dan, what are you doing?" repeatedly and started getting heated (what a bro). The feeling in his left arm came back pretty quick but his right arm remained numb and limp. He was sent for an MRI and and discovered the disc was pressing against the nerve. After that he started experiencing shooting pains and he learned his ulnar nerve was pinched. During a European tour he was getting frequent massages and chiropractic treatments to try and curb the discomfort and eventually got an epidural, which gave him some much-needed pain-free relief for about three weeks. When the doctor went to give him a second epidural he accidentally hit his spine with the needle, causing tremendous pain and the normally soft-spoken Washingtonian to blurt out a few choice curse words. They went ahead with the procedure but the second time around he felt no relief, and that combined with the horrible experience caused him to skip the planned third one entirely. All these treatments were only meant to be band-aids, and Daniel says that Dr. Amann told him they could do the surgery now, but that he didn't need it now - he could choose to do it when he was ready. "As long as it's just pain going down your arm you're fine." He confesses that he, Dr. Amann and Brie were really the only people who knew the extent of what he was dealing with.
"You don't want any of that pulled from you. There was a point where it was getting bad after the Rumble and at that point I really didn't have anything for WrestleMania. All that just kind of happened because of a series of events that went down. Then it was starting to get bad but then all of a sudden now I'm in the best spot of my career. The pain, it was bad but it was manageable and I was getting through, but then probably about two weeks before my surgery it turned to weakness and that's when you need to get the surgery because you're at risk of never getting it back."