by Phil Speer
March 17, 2003

There was Edge, just a few hours after spinal-cord fusion surgery last Monday, climbing stairs.

Edge (Adam Copeland) is the seventh Superstar to have had the surgery. When Chris Benoit had his operation, he went out and hiked up stairs just hours after he regained consciousness -- a few flights on the first day, a few more the second day, and so on until he checked out of the hospital. Since then, a few of the Superstars that had the procedure, including Amy Dumas (Lita), have done the same.

"(Benoit) did 80, and I think Amy did 130 or 140," Edge said in a phone interview with WWE.com. "I ended up doing 160. Dr. (Lloyd) Youngblood said I've got the record ... I wanted to go for 200, but I was leaving the hospital that night and I didn't want to get all sweaty."

These are not the kind of records Edge wanted to break, but he's still a competitor, and these kinds of things will have to do for now, until he can step back in the ring in about one year.

"I'm used to go-go-go, and I can't sit in one spot for too long," he said. "That's going to be the hardest part."

He's been so active since his surgery, in fact, that his wife, Alanah, has been telling him he needs to take it easier. The most recent example was last night. Edge figured that since he lived just 15 minutes from the Sun Dome in Tampa, he could go to the WWE live event there.

Upon arriving at the arena, Edge said, "Undertaker looked at me and said, 'What the hell are you doing here? You had surgery six days ago!'"

But Edge was undeterred. He even made a surprise appearance during the show, going out to the ring for Rhyno's match against Kanyon. Rhyno dedicated the match to Edge, his real-life good friend, and when Edge came out -- walking slowly, wearing a cumbersome hard collar -- the place went crazy.

"Rhyno said they reacted great, but I was so concerned with not falling," he said. "I know they reacted great because it got really emotional -- and just being that close to the action was pretty emotional too."

Six days after surgery.

By comparison, Chris Benoit went out of his way to not leave his house for the first few months after surgery, fearing an accident that could destroy his newly fused vertebrae and end his career, or worse.

"I guess I've got take it a little more easy, because I guess this is a pretty important part of the rehab," Edge said.

Also, Edge's operation was longer than originally planned. When Dr. Youngblood actually got a look at Edge's spinal cord, he realized that the damaged discs weren't herniated as originally thought, but were completely ruptured.

"He said it looked like someone had taken a corkscrew to my spine, and my discs just looked like a shattered cork," Edge said. "That's why it took five hours instead of three and a half."

Since the discs were ruptured, Dr. Youngblood needed extra time to clean out all the shattered pieces. "But that won't add to any of the rehab time, which is good," Edge said.

WWE television cameras were on hand to shoot the surgery, and Edge was interviewed just before going into the operating room. The footage is scheduled to air on an upcoming episode of Confidential.

Edge, 29, checked out of the hospital on Thursday night and flew home to Tampa, where he's been getting acquainted with his living-room couch, which has been a Godsend. Other Superstars have found it extremely difficult to sleep with their hard collar, which they're required to wear 24 hours a day, except when they're bathing, for the first few months after surgery. But Edge has turned his couch into a "fortress of pillows," and he's been able to sleep there. In fact, he's doing everything there -- watching TV, reading one of the books he's purchased recently, talking on the phone (which beeps every so often when his collar hits one of the buttons).

"I've molded my shape into this side of the couch," he said.

The magic couch also has a lever he can pull to help him into sitting position, which is a difficult task with a hard collar and an extremely sore hip. During surgery, a bone was removed from his hip and used to fuse his vertebrae.

"They actually have to peel the muscle off the bone," he said, "so it's really tender sitting up right now."

His throat has also been tender.

"In surgery ... they have to move your throat over three inches to get to your spine," he said. "That's quite a movement for your throat. Everybody was calling me (since the surgery), and they didn't think it was me at first because I didn't have any volume to my voice whatsoever."

Edge said today's the first day he sounds like himself again. "But I still don't have the stamina" to talk for long periods of time, he added.

As far as his physical stamina, Edge said he can be on his feet for about 45 minutes before he needs to take a break.

"At the Tampa show last night, I stood up for pretty much the whole time I was there," he said, "which is why when I got home, I was pretty much spent. That kind of made me realize what my timeframe is for energy right now." Today, he went to the guitar store and the bookstore, but after picking out a half-dozen books and carrying them around for a while, he needed to put them down and rest. Alanah carried the guitar for him, even though he thought he probably could do it himself.

Other than the occasional store visit, he sits and waits for the fusion to take hold.

"All I do is wear boxer shorts and wander around the house," he jokes. "I kind of look like Ozzy Osbourne. I kind of shuffle. The only thing I'm not screaming is, 'Sharon!' It's, 'Alanah!'"

But all things considered, he's doing pretty well. On the phone, he still seems like the same Edge. You'd have no idea that he had surgery one week ago. He sounds upbeat and optimistic, and he's already thinking about his return to the ring.

"I have two traits," he said. "Sometimes I'm just annoyingly positive, and (I'm) stubbornly determined," he said. "All I can think about now is coming back and being around for next year's WrestleMania."

He visits Dr. Youngblood's office again in five and a half weeks, at which time he hopes to be switched into a soft collar, and cleared to lift one-to-two-pound dumbbells.

Already, there are positive signs of recovery. For example, the first time he visited Dr. Youngblood's office, he was unable to lift his left thumb when the slightest bit of pressure was applied to it. Immediately after surgery, his strength had returned. Bone spurs touching against his spinal cord had cut off the nerves to his left arm, leaving him with virtually no strength.

"I can feel the muscles in my scapulars region of my back twitching, and my biceps twitching and my triceps twitching because the nerves are actually open now," he said. "My arm's alive again, basically."

Also, the numbness in his fingers is gone. Before the surgery, if he touched his left palm, "it felt like I stuck it in a socket," he said. The slightest movement, in fact, would trigger numbness and pain in his left arm.

"That was actually the scariest thing," he said. "In South Africa (last week), we just did one little thing when Bill DeMott came out, kicked me in the stomach and tried to take my neck brace off."

When Edge jolted forward after the kick, his arm went numb.

"I didn't feel like I had my arm," he said. "And I dropped to my knees and I just went, 'Whoa, what's going on here? Come back.'"

Edge said it wasn't DeMott's fault at all, it was just that he didn't know at the time the severity of his condition, "and obviously neither did Dr. Youngblood." As a precaution, for the remainder of the South African tour, Edge was not involved in any physicality.

He has since returned to the U.S., where the problem was fully diagnosed and surgically repaired before there was too much muscle atrophy. Edge said his shoulders started to weaken during the South African tour, but his strength didn't diminished as much as Rhyno's or Benoit's.

And there's another reason Edge is in good spirits these days.

His uncle called a few days ago and told him to visit a Web site, Adam-Copeland.net, where people from literally all over the world had posted get-well messages.

"I hopped on there last night, and I was just reading everything they were saying," he said. "I want to thank all of them for doing that, because it helps brighten up a day. You go through the whole range of emotions, and that stuff really helps."

Edge said he's been touched by the outpouring of support -- from people calling to check up on him "and they all know who they are," to complete strangers approaching him in the airport to say they're praying for him.

"I always just think, 'I'm a wrestler. No big deal. This is what I do. This is what I've wanted to do,'" he said. "But it actually affects people more than I thought."

*credit WWE.com*