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Rowdy Roddy Faces a New Foe

Posted: Dec 22nd 2006 By: CMBurnham

"Rowdy" Roddy Piper has spent a good deal of time on Earth living in a dream world--convincing people that the character he is playing in a wrestling ring or on a movie screen is real. Now, he's trying to wake up from a nightmare. A very real one.

"The worst part, I can't physically control it," Piper said this week. "I've broken my neck three times, been stabbed and had my hip replaced. I could deal with that. This is something I don't know how to react to. I can't fix it. I'm lost. If this beats me, I'm going to heaven because I've been to hell."

In late November, Piper was diagnosed with lymphoma. He is recovering at his Aloha home. In his first interview since his diagnosis, Piper was thankful and optomistic.

Recently back with World Wrestling Entertainment, he was touring Europe with that group when he began having serious back pain. He left the tour in Glasgow, Scotland--ironic, considering the Scottish persona the man born Roderick George Toombs adopted in the ring--to return to Portland for emergency surgery.

"I didn't know if I was going to make it," he said. "I was all hunched over and could barely walk. In Chicago, I bent over to grab my bags and just stuck in that position. I landed in Portland and went directly to St. Vincent's."

"The doctor on call was Dr. Oison O'Neill, who told the people in the emergency room to call him as soon as the results were back from the MRI. They called him at 3AM and scheduled surgery for 7:30AM. He's an incredible doctor--he did the surgery himself that morning."

The MRI showed three broken bones in Piper's spine, near enough to ripping into nerves that he was in danger of paralysis. But O'Neill fouind more than that

"He thought one of my lymph nodes was a little swollen," Piper said. "Turns out he was right."

Low-grade lymphoma was the diagnosis and doctors told him the odds are 70-30 in his favour. Piper, 53, now is mending his back while undergoing radiation treatments for four or five weeks. The strain is apparent in his voice.

"I always have a lot on my plate," he said. " I was in the middle of a move and I left them high and dry--we've filmed about half of it and they can't do anything until I get back. I was close to starting another movie with Jack Black."

"I've got a meeting scheduled in Los Angles on Jan. 5 with some TV people and John Carpenter--they want to talk about doing 'They Live' on television. And I was going to wrestle Vince McMahon at Wrestlemania."

Piper's heart is as big as a set of bagpipes and he heaps praise on the "professional and caring" people who looked after him in room 930 at St. Vincent. But he saves a lot of thanks for wrestling fans--who he believes indirectly saved his life.

"There was a WWE promotion called Cyber Sunday", he said. "Where fans voted on the Internet for who they wanted to be Ric Flair's tag team partner. They could have chosen Sgt. Slaughter or Dusty Rhodes, but they picked me. Well, we won the tag-team title and I was back in the ring."

"I probably wouldn't have felt the serious back pain from the injury for another two or three years if I hadn't been wrestling, the doctors said. And if I hadn't had the back surgery, they wouldn't have found the cancer early. I might have been a goner."

Piper is recuperating with his wife of 24 years, Kitty, and his children Stacia, Ariel, Colt and Falon. He goes to the gym five days a week after treatment.

"It's only cancer," Piper said. "I'm doing pretty good. I have a lot of work to do, and I need to support my family. So many people have been nice to me--sending me things and all that."

"I expect to be in Los Angeles for that meeting and I figure I'll have a full recovery by Jan. 15. It's time for me to suck it up and walk like a man."

Toughness, quite obviously, has never been a problem for "Rowdy" Roddy Piper.