Originally published on ProWrestlingSheet.

WWE star Dean Ambrose says he "nearly died" from a staph infection during his time away from the ring, which made his recent return mean that much more.

Ambrose detailed his recovery process during an interview with The Monitor and talked about how his down time was much longer than initially expected. 

"It was just one nightmare after another," Dean explained. "It was a pretty challenging period of time 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."

The wrestler says traces of an infection were found during the first surgery, but about 6 weeks later he felt like something wasn't right and returned to the doctor for a checkup.

"I thought I was just going to turn right back around and get on a plane and go home," he continued. "And they were like, ‘No, you have to go in again for surgery like right now.’ I was like, ‘Oh, no.’ I had just kind of got through all of the stitches and all of that stuff. It was a giant mess. I just kept having to start back from square one. I ended up just moving to Birmingham just to play it safe and be with the doctor and best rehab guys."

"The Lunatic Fringe" added, "To go from not being able to eat my Fruit 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."

In the interview, Dean also talked about how he now values things that might not be as important to other wrestlers.

At this point, money or any kind of quantifiable statistics, titles or whatever, or any kind of validation from anybody is not really important to me any more at this point. The most important thing, the thing that makes me the happiest, is just being happy with a piece of work. Like an artist makes a watercolor painting or whatever, and they sit back and go, ‘I’m really happy with that.’ The thing that I value most in my past and my career at this point, I realize they’re just the stories that I’m more proud of that were told, that still stand up. Just good pieces of work. I want to be happy with the finished product. Whether that’s one match, or a longer story, or if that’s one interview, or whatever. Whatever it is. That’s the most important thing to me at this point. Because I’ve had all the other things. Out of every thing that there is, that’s still the most rewarding thing and the only thing that drives me or gets me really excited other than just the live performance and being in front of the crowd, is that artistic, creative satisfaction.

CLICK HERE to read the full interview where Dean covers mentally checking out of WWE during his rehab process, his workout regimen and much more.