Tony Gonzalez Gets the Scare of His Life- Twice

by Chris on Sep 10, 2007 7:51 AM CDT

Great article by the consistently good Joe Posnanski. This past offseason, after feeling a shooting pain in his head and being unable to feel part of his tongue, Tony Gonzalez went to the hospital.

After the scan, though, the doctors determined he had Bell’s Palsy, a usually temporary condition that paralyzes facial muscles. For three weeks, Gonzalez lived with the paralysis. He could not practice football because his eye would not close. He slept with tape holding down his eye. He ate all his food on the one side of his mouth where he could still taste. He proposed to October, his wife, with his face drooping.

My brother had Bell's Palsy in high school and it wasn't as serious as you'd think. Oddly enough, I received an email from a reader months ago asking about Tony Gonzalez's face. The reader had seen TG recently and actually asked if he had had a stroke. I didn't think much of it at the time because I hadn't heard anything like it from anywhere else.

After a few weeks, Tony's face began to return to normal. During a routine blood test to determine if he had full recovered, TG got some more bad news.

Gonzalez rushed to the hospital again, and this time the doctors would not even tell him what was wrong. They just kept saying that it was very bad. They said something about white-cell count. Gonzalez was so scared, he started crying.

Turns out, Tony's normal blood sample had been switched with the sample of someone who was really sick.

"Did it change me? You better believe it changed me," Tony said.

Amazing story. I'm surprised the media kept this one under wraps for so long.

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