Dodgers pitcher Dustin May said he was “pretty close” to joining his team’s 2024 World Series run until a “complete freak accident” required emergency surgery for a serious tear in his esophagus last July.
May, who during the 2023 season had flexor tendon and Tommy John surgery, was rehabbing at the Dodgers’ Camelback Ranch facility in Arizona when he went out to dinner on July 10 and got a piece of lettuce stuck in his throat, which caused a serious tear in his esophagus, he told the Los Angeles Times.
It required emergency surgery that night and derailed his hopes of returning to the Dodgers’ bullpen.
“It was definitely a life-altering event,” May said while recalling the incident for first time publicly. “It was definitely very serious. It’s not a very common surgery. It was definitely an emergency.
“I probably wouldn’t have made it through the night if I didn’t have it.”
May added that after taking one bite of his salad, he felt lettuce stuck in his throat and tried to wash it down with water.
The right-hander recounted feeling a “mega-painful” sensation in his throat and stomach for 15 minutes — and when it went away, he returned home thinking he would be OK.
“I’m not a big panicker,” he said. “It kind of chilled out. So I was like, ‘I’m fine. I don’t need to do anything.’”
May’s wife, Millie, encouraged him to go to the ER and to get checked out.
May said he underwent “basically a full abdominal surgery” to repair the tear in his esophagus and explained that doctors said he had lettuce lodged in his throat that led to a highly uncommon food impaction, which perforated his esophagus tube.
Now, he has a long vertical scar from his lower chest to his stomach from the emergency surgery.
The surgery required six months of recovery, during which May wasn’t allowed to lift weights heavier than 10 pounds.
“It was extremely frustrating,” May said. “You can’t plan for it. You can’t try to prevent it. It just happened. It wasn’t on my bingo card for 2024.”
May, who began minimal throwing activities in November, said he wasn’t back to his full strength until New Year’s.
“It just kind of gives me a different viewpoint on a lot of things in life,” he said. “Just seeing how something so non-baseball-related can just be like — it can be gone in a second. And the stuff it put my wife through, it definitely gave me [a feeling] of, ‘Wow, stuff can change like that.’ It was definitely very scary.”
The pitcher is now focused on preparing for the Dodgers’ opening series against the Chicago Cubs in Tokyo on March 18 and 19.
May threw during a spring training workout at Camelback Ranch on Sunday.
