Kirk Herbstreit reveals details of dealing with blood clots this offseason
By Keith Farner
Published:
Kirk Herbstreit had a health scare in the offseason, and revealed in a recent in-depth story in the Los Angeles Times how he dealt with blood clots.
Herbstreit revealed that it began with what he thought was a calf pull, then pain in the right side of his chest in bed, then shortness of breath. He eventually got to a cardiologist friend in Columbus, Ohio.
“Your heart arteries are crystal clear, look great,” Herbstreit recalls the doctor saying. “But, you’re not going to believe this: You have clots in your lungs.”
Herbstreit went back home to Cincinnati and had a scan of his right calf. More clots.
“Somehow they got into my bloodstream, went through my heart and into my lungs,” Herbstreit says. “Once it got into the lungs, it’s like a dead end. They’re in your lungs, but they go through your heart. That’s where people die. … And so I was just like, ‘Damn.’ ”
As Herbstreit gets set to embark on a busy football season with travel for ESPN and “College GameDay” along with Amazon’s “Thursday Night Football,” he has a clean bill of health.
Herbstreit immediately got on blood thinners, and felt better within a few days, but he still sat out ESPN’s NFL draft coverage. All that was needed since he’s about to make 3 stops in 3 days each week this season.
A former newspaper veteran, Keith Farner is a news manager for Saturday Down South.
