When I was growing up, I wanted to be, as most other sons did, like my father. I wanted to walk like him, talk like him, and be as handsome and successful as he was, and I think I achieved that. But there is one way I did not want to be like my father.

I did not want to die like him.

On July 21st, I awoke to find my heart beating at over 200 beats a minute (the average heart beats 60-80 times a minute). Despite this rapid heartbeat, I tried to go about my daily routine, but the tightness in my chest and the numbing of my left arm made me realize that would not be possible. So, I took myself to Community Hospital where, upon my arrival, I was strapped to a heart monitor and began to receive intense medical treatment. Alarmed and afraid, I asked my best friend in the world, the Lord, for help. “Please, please don’t let me die,” I asked. I did not want to die because I am a 26 year old in the prime of his life. I can honestly tell you that 1998 has been the best year of my life, and if I don’t want the year to end on December 31st, I certainly don’t want it to end on July 21st. (My father passed away of a heart attack in April 1981, April 21st, 1981).

Whether it was my plea to the Lord, the doctors, or the fact that it was not my time yet, I don’t know. All I know was that instead of being taken from this Earth, I was taken upstairs to the Cardiac Care Unit of the hospital where I was placed in a ward with patients almost three times my age. I can say, with no pride nor honor, that I am the youngest person in the history of Community Hospital to be placed in that ward. That is a title I will not accept, well, wholeheartedly.

Day after day for over a week I endured shots and IV’s and tests until the doctor spoke to me and told me that I might need to be transferred to Cornell Medical Center for an emergency cardio version, a procedure which involves placing a tube inside the heart through the leg and literally shocking the heart back into normal rhythm. He further stated that if I do not stay in this hospital under strict observation for the next four days, there is a chance of my condition becoming fatal.

No one knows, nor can predict the type of reaction they will have when they hear that sentence told to them. I was, well, speechless. If someone invented a device that could tell you the exact moment that you were going to die, would you want to know? Well, I wouldn’t, but I found out anyway.

After absorbing the actual words that he said in an audible sense, I began to let the enormity of what he said sink in.

So little time, what should I do?

I know what I have done in the 26 years that I have lived – so what will I do in the four days before I die?

I started to think of everything that is in my life right now; my TV show, my job at this newspaper, my work with professional wrestling. “All these things are so important, I can’t go now,” I said. And then it happened, just when I started to think about all of these things, I got something I did not expect – visitors, friends, and family. People who I thought did not know I was in the hospital came to visit me with cards and gifts and smiles and love.

It was then that I realized that all the shows and articles and wrestling matches in the world could not take the place of my friends and family. I will tell you that I have never had as many good friends in my life as I do right now, and to see them enter my hospital room one by one made me realize the power of friendship and how much more important the people in our lives are than the life we live. I now believe that despite the excellent care I received at Community Hospital, all the doctors in the world could not take the place of friendship, because that is truly the best medicine of all.

So to all of my friends and family, I say thank you. Thank you for taking the time to come see me in the hospital. Thank you for your cards, gifts and prayers, and, most importantly, thank you for your friendship.

Well, now that I made it past the four day mark, I am out of the hospital and today is the first day of the rest of my life, I will make the best of the time I have left, because I believe that time is a companion that goes with us on the journey of life, and reminds us to cherish every moment...because they’ll never come again.

What we leave behind is not as important as how we’ve lived.

And I plan to live forever.