‘He’s in a lot of pain’: Grant Denyer bedridden with annular fissure

Fighting back tears, Chezzi Denyer has revealed her husband is in “a lot of pain” after being hospitalised with a new back injury this week.

Grant Denyer is in “a lot of pain” after being hospitalised earlier this week with a fresh back injury, the Gold Logie winner’s wife Chezzi has revealed.
Denyer has been at home sick from his 2Day FM breakfast show Grant, Ed & Ash this week, phoning in on Monday to reveal he had injured himself while using a mallet to hammer in some pegs in a paddock on his farm.

This morning Chezzi gave an update on his condition, revealing he was seriously injured and bedridden.

Telling Denyer’s co-hosts Ed Kavalee and Ash London she was “shaky” and “trying not to cry,” Chezzi said doctors had told them yesterday what was wrong with his back.

“He found out yesterday he’s got an annular fissure, which is a tear in his lower disc, so it’s incredibly painful and it basically makes it impossible for him to walk, sit, or do anything other than lie on his left side,” she said.

“He’s in a lot of pain and it’s really difficult to watch. It took me back to when he broke his back 10 years ago because the pain is so intense when he moves that you can’t help but get quite angry, and that’s not in his nature.

“Also on top of that, he feels like he’s let the world down, he’s let you guys down because he wants to be at work and it’s a really busy period, so he’s just doing his best.”

Kavalee asked whether the couple had been concerned about Denyer using pain medication after the Family Feud host previously revealed he had struggled with dependence on prescription drugs following his 2008 back injury.

But Chezzi said he had been in so much agony when he was rushed to hospital that giving him pain meds had been the only option from staff there.

The couple were now following medical advice on how best to manage Denyer’s pain given his past issues with certain medications.

Grant Denyer celebrates with wife Chezzi after winning the Gold Logie. Picture: Chris Hyde/Getty Images

“He was in such intense, acute pain when we got into hospital and they checked his vitals and said this guy needs to be given a massive dose of morphine, his blood pressure is through the roof,” Chezzi explained.

“I don’t think he was really thinking about it, but we’ve had some really good guidance and we’ve been juggling different types of medication because usually they put you on very strong morphine which is not Grant’s friend.

“So we’ve had to take some really good advice and guidance and we’ve finally found something that is a very stable drug that will allow him just to rest and not have the big patches of pain.”

Chezzi also shared a photo of Denyer in hospital on Instagram, thanking people for their well wishes and writing that finding out he had an annular fissure was “not real fair, but then that is life”.

In 2008, Denyer broke his back in a monster truck smash, an injury that required months of recovery.

Following his Gold Logie win last year Denyer revealed to The Daily Telegraph the injury had left him in a dark place and heavily medicated, leading what he now fears may have been a dependence on painkillers.

“I mentally wasn’t well, I was on pain medication for long time, and I probably wasn’t aware of the effects of that. I just didn’t have an education to be able to deal with it. I think I was caught in that trap and a whole whirlwind of emotions that meant I was at my lowest,” he said.

He also revealed on his 2Day FM breakfast show last week how the pain medication had made him hallucinate and “escape” from the home, much to the stress and worry of Chezzi.

“The tipping point, where my wife nearly left me, I was missing for quite a long time now, a couple of hours … I was asleep in the emergency fire escape in a high-rise building, sleeping on the floor in my undies next to a human poo,” Denyer recalled.

“I was almost cuddled up to someone’s faeces in the spooning position.”

Denyer narrowly escaped serious injury following another serious racing car accident near Melbourne in 2017 that left him with a broken coccyx and finger.