Colorado football coach Deion Sanders said he was feeling good after surgery Friday to remove blood clots and expected to be out of the hospital Sunday.
“I had a big blood clot in my thigh that they got out, and I had some below my knee that they got out,” Sanders said in an Instagram post Saturday that showed him talking to his children on the phone from his hospital bed. “Then I’ve got one in the right leg that they’re going to get soon.”
Sanders’ girlfriend, Tracey Edmonds, also said in an Instagram post after the surgery that it was a “long, but successful day.”
The Pro Football Hall of Famer said in the same conversation with his family that the blood clot that was removed from his left thigh was “really bad.”
“That was the one that was doing the most damage,” he said in a more extended video posted by his son Deion Jr. on YouTube. Sanders, 55, said the clots below the knee were “a bunch of little ones” and the one in right thigh “is not as bad as the other ones, but they want to get it before it grows.”
What led to this point?
The surgery near Denver is the latest in a series of health problems for Sanders since 2021, when he developed blood clots and had several surgeries on his left foot and leg. He previously said it was a life-threatening situation at one point then, and he almost needed to have his leg amputated below the knee. Sanders instead had two toes amputated from it and missed three games that season as Jackson State’s football coach before returning to the sideline in a motorized wheelchair.
SPORTS NEWSLETTER:Sign up to get the latest news and features sent directly to your inbox
But the blood circulation issues have continued for him and he said he no longer has feeling at the bottom of that foot. Two of his remaining three toes on it also are abnormally bent “hammertoes” that he said also will require surgery to “straighten out.”
Sanders said in an Instagram post Thursday that the surgery Friday was designed to improve blood flow in the leg so they can fix the toes later. Once one of the fastest players in the NFL, Sanders walks with a limp and left calf that had the sides cut out during surgery in 2021, leaving a narrow bottom leg missing his big toe and adjacent toe.
One of his doctors said also said last week Sanders faced the risk of a foot amputation at some point, depending on how things developed. But Sanders downplayed that risk and said that was only if “worse comes to worst.”
Sanders was hired at Colorado in December and will coach his first game as the Buffaloes’ coach Sept. 2 at TCU.
Follow reporter Brent Schrotenboer @Schrotenboer. E-mail: [email protected]
