It’s not every day that trying to eat healthy will literally almost kill you.
Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Dustin May went from hoping that he could join the team for its World Series run last year to undergoing life-saving surgery — and all because of a salad.
May, who was rehabbing after undergoing flexor tendon and Tommy John surgery during the 2023 season, said that he was “pretty close” to rejoining the team until a “complete freak accident” derailed those plans.
The righty’s chance encounter with a piece of lettuce ended up sending him to the hospital, where he underwent emergency surgery for a serious tear in his esophagus last July.
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May told the Los Angeles Times that the incident occurred while rehabbing at the team’s Camelback Ranch facility in Arizona. On July 10, he had gone out for dinner and got a piece of lettuce stuck in his throat, which caused a serious tear in his esophagus.
“It was definitely a life-altering event,” May said, recounting the incident for the 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.”
The 27-year-old said that after taking just one bite of his salad, he felt lettuce was stuck in his throat and tried to wash it down with water, adding that he then felt a “mega-painful” sensation in his throat and stomach for 15 minutes.
When the pain subsided, May 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.’”
However, May’s wife, Millie, encouraged him to go to the ER and get checked out.
It turned out to be a good idea, as May then underwent “basically a full abdominal surgery” to repair the tear in his esophagus.
He said that doctors told him that the lettuce lodged in his throat, leading to a highly uncommon food impaction, which perforated his esophagus tube.
The surgery required six months of recovery, during which the pitcher wasn’t allowed to lift weights heavier than 10 pounds. He now sports a long, vertical scar from his lower chest down to his stomach.
“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 began minimal throwing activities in November, but said he wasn’t back to his full strength until the new year.
“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.”
With the incident now in the rearview mirror, May is hoping to help the Dodgers defend the World Series title this year and was back on the mound this week throwing a workout session.
The Dodgers open their regular season with a series against the Chicago Cubs in Tokyo on March 18 and 19.
May had a 4-1 record with a 2.63 ERA in 2023 before being placed on the IL.