In February 2019, former NBA All-Star point guard Kenny Anderson nearly lost his life after suffering a stroke.
The New Jersey Nets' No.2 overall pick of the 1991 NBA Draft was having a typical day in his Pembroke Pines, Florida, home when he suddenly lost balance inside the bathroom. Anderson realized that he was starting to lose vision in his right eye and felt his eyes drooping.
Sensing an emergency, he shouted to call his daughter Tiana. But she was inside her room with the bedroom door locked. As Kenny started to panic, an unlikely hero saved the day.
"I got up, went to the bathroom, my wife was working out, and I fell," said Anderson on The Mark Jackson Show. "And blind one side and my dog saw that, he ran to my daughter's room and scratched the door. She ran in, and boom, ambulance, boom, took a shot, boom."
Kenny's daughter knew what to do
It was one thing that Caleb was an intelligent dog, but it was another that Tiana knew what to do. Based on what she had recently learned from a health class in school, she knew what was happening. Kenny's daughter asked her dad to lie down calmly while she dialed 911.
The ambulance came just as his wife Natasha arrived home. Kenny was rushed to the Memorial Hospital at Pembroke Pines, where he stayed in the ICU. Miraculously, Kenny regained consciousness a couple of days later. However, he knew it could have gone differently.
"I wasn't done, but if my dog wasn't there," added Anderson. "I probably would have been sitting on the floor laid out for who knows and probably wouldn't have made it. But that was that, and then I was in the hospital for like three months, and I woke up. It was crazy. I woke up, and I was normal."
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The road to recovery was long and tough
Like any stroke victim, Kenny's recovery wasn't easy. Anderson underwent rehab for his vision, muscles, coordination, and speech. He got past all that and has no physical limitations. However, in 2020, Chibbs admitted that he suffered memory loss .
"I'm feeling fine, I'm getting back to normal," Anderson said . "Before everything with the coronavirus went on, I was going to the doctor here at Vanderbilt, you know, once a week, every Thursday, to just get some of my memory back. God, you know that it could have been worse, but it was just a blessing, man."
Getting to finish an entire podcast episode with Mark and Bluu without any hitch was great to see. However, perhaps the biggest blessing to Kenny and his family is Caleb, who proved on that near-fateful day that dogs are truly a man's best friend.
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