Paralympian Hunter Woodhall went to visit his dad in the hospital and ended up becoming a patient himself.
“Came to Utah to spend time with my dad after his open heart surgery,” the track and field star, 26, wrote via his Instagram Story on Tuesday, March 4. “Yesterday I had horrible stomach pain, turns out I have to get [my] appendix removed. So, we will be recovering together.”
In a subsequent snap, Woodhall posted a photo showing the athlete lying in a hospital bed awaiting “emergency surgery.”
“Didn’t need an appendix anyway,” he joked.
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Hours later, Woodhall gave an update, sharing that the surgery was a success and thanking everyone for their concern.
“Feeling pretty good, so everything went well,” he said in a video. “Thanks for all of the thoughts and prayers.”
The following day, Woodhall gave more details about what happened and credited his Oura Ring for “saving” his life.
“Everything was fine [at first]. I was even going to the store to get warm clothes to go to practice that day,” he explained in a Wednesday, March 5, Instagram Reel. “Before I went to practice, I went and ate lunch. I had a salad with some blue cheese on it and that’ll be important later.”
Woodhall shared that after practice, he returned to his parents’ house and started to experience stomach pain. At the time, Woodhall thought the reaction was due to a lactose intolerance from the cheese — even though he described the pain as being far more severe than anything he had experienced previously. Still, he said he tried to sleep it off.
“When I woke up, I had some soreness in my lower right abdomen, which came up as a red flag, but I figured I could just tough it out,” he said. “But what caught me off guard is a symptom radar that had major signs that something was wrong in my body.”
Wooohall explained that the warning was the first he had received since wearing the fitness accessory for “four years.” So after looking up symptoms for appendix issues, he ultimately decided to ask his mom to take him to the hospital. Doctors ran multiple tests on Woodhall and the CT scan revealed that his appendix was “extremely enlarged.” Woodhall was then prepped for emergency surgery. Now both he and his father are on the mend.
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“My dad is doing great as well,” he said. “I came here to recover with him and now we’re going to be recovering together.”
Last summer, Woodhall took home gold in the men’s 400m T62 at the 2024 Paris Paralympics weeks after his wife, Tara Davis-Woodhall, won gold in the women’s long jump at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
“Every single day this year, we’ve just tried to do the right things,” he told CNN of what it was like to win in September 2024. “This is what we train for. Nothing is guaranteed in sports, in athletics anything can happen. So when it actually does go the way that you plan it to, and you just have that moment of relief, it’s surreal. It was a really special moment.”
