Would You Return to Work Two Days after an Emergency Appendectomy? (Asking for Rich)

Two days after an emergency appendectomy, Rich was back behind the desk. And the first thing the crew wanted was the whole story.

"Shocking and crazy and uplifting and thankful," Rich said, summing up the stretch that took him from hosting a full show in pain to an operating room at St. John's Health Center.

The warning signs came in stages. Rich said he realized how serious it was "when my doctor told me to go to urgent care. And then my GI told me the same thing." He went, got a CT scan, and the results did not come back until later. In the meantime, he had pushed through the entire Tuesday show hurting, something the crew saw firsthand from across the studio.

At urgent care, they gave him fluids and the pain eased. Rich figured the worst was behind him.

"So, I thought, 'Okay, I'm through it.' Just going to go to sleep," he said.

It was not behind him. At 10:15 that night, his wife, Suzy Shuster, woke him up with a simple instruction: "Let's go." The destination was St. John's, and the message was blunt. His appendix had to come out.

"I'm like, 'What?'" Rich recalled.

About 12 hours later, he was on his way into surgery, and he remembers the exact moment. One nurse asked another what time it was as they wheeled him into the OR. The answer was 10:08 Pacific. "And then they put the mask on and then nighty night," Rich said.

He woke up to a detail that could only happen on this show. While he was under, Suzy had done a live shot into the program. The crew noted Rich had given them the green light by text that morning to talk about it, and Rich had no complaints.

"My life is laid bare on this program, which is a blessing," he said.

Mostly, Rich wanted to say thank you. He called the care he received "incredible" and made sure to credit the staff at St. John's, calling it an incredible spot in Southern California. Forty-four minutes into his first show back, he said, things had been "a blast."