Tarek El Moussa released ‘Flip Your Life’ on Feb. 6.Photo:Heidi Gutman-Guillaume
Heidi Gutman-Guillaume
Tarek El Moussais reliving one of his most painful memories in his new book.
“I was finishing one of the last holes of the course when I felt a spasm in my back. Something was obviously wrong, because there was continuous pain,” El Moussa recalls. He adds that even though he knew he should’ve stopped playing “immediately,” he still pushed through the game.
Tarek El Moussa injured his back while playing golf.Tarek El Moussa/TikTok
Tarek El Moussa/TikTok
And then things went very wrong.
He says that the feeling “radiated” throughout his body and his lower back and legs “seemed to be on fire.”
His friends helped him into the golf cart, got him to his car and he managed to drive himself to the hospital. But when he pulled up to the emergency room, he writes, “[I] opened my car door, and tried to get out, I dropped to the pavement. I started crawling to the door. Nurses came running. All I could say was, ‘Please help me.’”
The incident at the golf course was the start of “fifteen months of a whole new medical challenge,” the dad of three writes, as a result of several slipped discs pinching the sciatic nerve in his lower back.
The ‘Flip or Flop’ star shared this photo of him in the hospital after he injured his back a second time in 2018.Tarek El Moussa/Instagram
Tarek El Moussa/Instagram
The treatment would lead to even bigger problems for El Moussa. “Instantly, my life became a hamster wheel of painkillers, medical specialists, and physical therapy, but nothing worked,” he writes. He was taking Vicodin, Dilaudid and morphine.
Speaking to PEOPLE about the aftermath of his injury, he recalled, “After that I had that awfulsurgery with complications. And then after thatI got on the testosterone, and then after that,Christina left me. So 2013, ‘14, ‘15, for four years, I’ve just lived through hell.”
In addition to his harrowing health struggles,Flip Your Lifegoes deep on El Moussa’s relationship with his ex wife andFlip or Flopco-hostChristina Hall,
He tells his version of his “very public divorce,” including the2016 incident involving a gun and a 911 callthat ended their marriage, after which he went through withdrawal from testosterone and entered rehab for two months.
Cover of ‘Flip Your Life’ out Feb. 6, 2024.
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The exes share two children, daughter Taylor, 13, and son Brayden, 8. Since the split, both have remarried and expanded their families. El Moussa shares a 1-year-old son, Tristan, with his wife,Selling SunsetalumHeather El Moussa. Hall marriedCelebrity IOU: Joyridehost Ant Anstead, with whom she shares son Hudson, 4. They split in 2020 and she later married real estate agentJosh Hallin 2022.
Tarek and Heather Rae El Moussa in June 2022.Jeff Kravitz/Getty
Jeff Kravitz/Getty
Speaking to PEOPLE in January, El Moussa revealed he has no hard feelings toward his ex-wife despite their rocky split.
“I hold nothing against Christina. I understand why she did what she did. We had a lot of hard years through my sicknesses and my mental health struggles," he says. And their relationship and Tarek’s health are both in a better place than they have been in a long time: “I never gave up Through a lot of hard work, pain and just dreaming, I was able to get to where I am today.”
source: people.com
