Courtesy the Long Beach Press Telegram

(August 3, 2010) During a riotous 13-year span that covered four radio stations and that was not seamless-there were interruptions due to such vexations as format changes, suspensions and firings-Joe McDonnell was my sports talk show partner on the Southern California airways.

He was loud, opinionated, obnoxious, irreverent, outrageous, unpredictable, knowledgeable, brash and, most of all, entertaining.

The Big Nasty, I dubbed him, which encapsulated not only his bumptious persona but also his considerable girth that, at its peak, reached 740 pounds.

Well, I caught up with my old friend the other evening at Phil Trani's Restaurant in Long Beach, and I couldn't believe what I saw, heard and felt.

Literally, ol' Joe was half the man he used to be, which he revealed was indeed the case, saying, "Actually, I weigh now less than half of what I once did. I'm down to around 300, which is what I was my senior year in high school. I've shrunk seven sizes."

And, what was even more remarkable, Joe McDonnell spoke softly without any rancor, without any of his trademark searing diatribes that long have been a standard part of his image.

He cut a mellow, grateful, even humble figure as he reflected somberly on recent harrowing events that he says has given him a new perspective on everyday existence.

"I have a new zest for life since I came so close to losing mine," McDonnell says. "I definitely see things a little differently now. Things
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that might have incited me to anger in the past don't bother me now. I guess you can say I'm more tolerant. But by all rights I now should be dead.

"They say cats have nine lives. Well, you can call me the `Big Cat' from now on because I've been given another life."

The 53-year-old McDonnell, an Bishop Alemany High graduate who resides in North Hills in the Valley, then related a frightening tale, a medical nightmare that sapped so much of his strength and has resulted in his having to be on 24-hour antibiotics the past couple of months.

"Actually, it all came to a climax on the Memorial Day weekend, but I hadn't been feeling well for a long time," says McDonnell, who departed Sporting News Radio in January and since then has done fill-in work at KNX (AM 1070). "I had gone to the Angels spring training camp in Tempe five times, and was talking to people in Scottsdale about doing a syndicated radio sports show. But every time I went, I felt worse and worse. I was tired all the time and just didn't feel right."

After falling down accidentally on May 27, McDonnell woke up the next morning with excruciating pain in his collarbone-and figured it was broken.

Fortunately, McDonnell's orthopedist, Dr. James Strazzeri, after examining McDonnell, had a hunch something else was wrong-and ordered McDonnell to have a CT scan.

"If Dr. Strazzeri had decided only on X-rays, I wouldn't be talking to you now," he says. "Well, after I underwent the CT scan, I was walking back to my car in the parking lot when the CT Tech came running out and told me I couldn't leave, that I had a very serious infection and that my bones were black."

McDonnell soon was diagnosed with suffering from a flesh-eating bacteria - necrotizing fasciitis is the medical term for it - and also a bacterial form of pneumonia and was immediately admitted to Providence Holy Cross Hospital in Mission Hills.

And, for a couple of days, it seemed that the antibiotic treatment he was receiving was working, until it was discovered his white blood count had risen to more than 29,000 (around 11,000 is normal).

"This is when they decided I had to have surgery," McDonnell says. "It was performed on me on the day after Memorial Day by Dr. Michael Soltero, who, ironically, was Chick Hearn's surgeon when Chick had a heart valve replacement.

"I had part of my collarbone removed and part of my breastplate removed. They also did some muscle scrapping of my neck. It was all done to get rid of the bacteria. I spent nine days in the hospital."

It has been a long, agonizing recovery period for Joe McDonnell, who until last Thursday had three Picc lines - catheters for intravenous access - sticking out of his left arm and had the antibiotics administered to him by his loyal wife, Elizabeth.

McDonnell now takes the medicine orally.

"My wife has been a godsend for me, an absolute angel," he says. "She has cleaned and changed the bandages on my surgical wounds and done everything else I've needed. "And my doctors have been incredible. I definitely wouldn't be here without Doctors Srazzeri and Soltero. And my infectious disease doctor, Dr. Edwin Yellin, also has been brilliant, as has my hematologist, Dr. Shamel Sanani."

Joe McDonnell has gone through his share of past ordeals, including suffering second- and third-degree burns over 38 percent of his body at age 23 when a large pot of boiling coffee spilled on him at a family party.

"But nothing comes close to this," he says. "After I got out of the hospital, I was so weak and out of it for so long that I didn't even watch the Laker playoff games. And I'm one of the most passionate Laker fans in the world. But I did manage to watch Game 7 between the Lakers and Celtics, and I wept when it ended. I think all my emotions just poured out of me."

"There were times when I thought we might lose Joe," admits Elizabeth McDonnell, who often shuttled back and forth between her job at the KLOS radio station in Culver City and North Hills to lend assistance to her husband.

But, as Joe McDonnell has demonstrated so often during his long and colorful career in which he's worked at 12 local radio stations, he is one resilient soul.

"I'm still not all the way back," he says. "But I'm getting better every day."

McDonnell will do a few shifts at KNX next month, but he's still wants to get back into hosting a sports talk show, which he did so long and so controversially in these parts.

And you can be sure Joe McDonnell eventually will return. After all, the Big Cat has a lot more lives available to him, including even in the radio business.

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