Speaking to The Monitor ahead of tonight’s non-televised live event in Edinburg, Texas, former WWE champion Dean Ambrose recounted the nightmares he endured during the eight months out with injuries.

Ambrose said that he had a lot of frustrations throughout the months as it took much longer than he anticipated and described the past year as a very challenging period to go through. “I ended up having two different surgeries. I had this MRSA, Staph infection. I nearly died. I was in the hospital for a week plugged up to this antibiotic drip thing, and I was on all these antibiotics for months that make you puke and crap your pants,” Ambrose said.

He said that during the first surgery, something went wrong due to the infection and his arm and triceps didn’t heal correctly. “But for a minute there, it was getting scary. By the time I got that second surgery, it was March, I think. My arm was so shrunken and skeletal that it was weird,” he continued.

Ambrose said that he couldn’t move or flex his arm in so long that he was scared that his mobility wouldn’t come back. Doctors told him the initial surgery would take up to four months to get back in the ring but when he woke up following surgery, docs told him it will be at least six months. “They said they found traces of an infection during the first surgery, but they cleaned it out. I don’t know if it was in there previously, or if it came after. It could’ve been with me for years. I don’t know. But it was about six weeks or so after that I was like, this is not healing correctly,” The Shield member said.

But eventually, Ambrose healed as expected and he returned to the ring on Raw several weeks ago. “To go from not being able to eat my Froot Loops, to being able to get back in the ring and throw people around and throw punches and do everything back to normal, it was a very gratifying feeling.”

You can read the full, interesting interview where Ambrose goes into more detail of the surgery and recovery at TheMonitor.com.