Suzy Shuster’s 1st Sideline Report Since 2006 Was about… Rich’s Appendectomy???

Suzy Shuster has not filed a sideline report since 2006. She filed one Wednesday, from St. John's Health Center, about her husband's appendix.

She also asked for a proper toss first, because if you are going to do it, do it right.

"Colleen, throw to me like you're in the field," Shuster said. "Let's see if I can still do it."

Colleen obliged, live to the scene, and what followed was a genuinely flawless piece of television.

"Yesterday about 8:05 in the morning, Rich started experiencing lower abdominal pain," Shuster reported. "He went to work anyway and he pushed through three hours of the Rich Eisen Show even though he was in acute distress."

The timeline from there is the part that makes everyone wince a little. Rich went home and tried to nap, and could not. He eventually checked with his doctor, who found an incredibly inflamed appendix. He went to bed anyway. At 10:30 that night he was woken up and driven to the emergency room by his wife, who was also, at that moment, the reporter on the story.

Dr. Anton Bilchik performed the appendectomy that morning, and the assessment afterward was not casual.

"He told me that Rich's appendix was incredibly inflamed, and we just narrowly escaped an emergency," Shuster said.

Then came the sign off, delivered with the full cadence of the form. Rich is in recovery and on intravenous drugs. It will take a day or two. Colleen might need to come back and host again tomorrow.

And, per the doctor, there is a prognosis built entirely on lifestyle choices.

"Luckily Rich had been working out, both doing Pilates and weight training, and had been staying off the jelly beans, and that will get him back into the chair as fast as possibly Friday."

Back to you, guys.

The room lost it, and correctly so. Twenty years off and Shuster nailed it, right down to the pickup, which she ran twice for anyone who missed it the first time.

She had not planned any of this. When it all happened at 11 the previous night, she woke Colleen up to ask her to host, and admitted the first thing her brain produced was that this was shaping up like a bad sideline report.

"That's how sick I am," she said. "I had to put in that he's doing Pilates, weight training and laying off the jelly beans. That's what you do for a sideline report."

The jelly beans, for the record, required follow up. They were an issue at some point. The training staff has told him to lay off the sugar, and he is on a whole new nutritional path.

There was an offer to take the camera into the room for a bedside live shot, which Shuster did not entirely dismiss.

"Don't put it past me," she said. "I love a good story."

Undercover with Suzy Shuster. Live to the hospital bed.

The other medical situation in the building was self inflicted. Rich never got to his chicken soup from the day before, so it sat out overnight. Chris arrived hungry, saw it, and made a decision.

"I just tried a few noodles, cold obviously. Still tasted good. Ate the whole thing."

The follow up question was fair. What part of 24 hours of chicken soup left out overnight seemed like a great idea?

Chris pushed back on the premise rather than the judgment.

"Technically, we were probably at like 22 hours if we're being accurate."

Shuster immediately had her next assignment.

"My next sideline report will be Chris Brockman in the ER due to extreme food poisoning," she said, then ran the whole thing in character, with Sarah Tiana rushing him in and hopes that he would be back in the chair by Friday.

It nearly happened for a different reason, though. At one point Chris was at the back of the studio making a sound that the room interpreted as choking. He maintains it went down the wrong pipe.

Choked On A Noodle was immediately nominated as a fantasy team name.

Chris, who has had food poisoning before and described it as terrible, was undeterred.

Somewhere in there, someone noted the strangest detail of all, which is that Rich is lying in a recovery room while his wife delivers a live shot about his abdomen, and the thing most likely to upset him is that his show is on the air without him.

Shuster went back in to check on him, with a final word from the field.

"He'll be back in the chair by Friday."