This is just a stunning interview that has been posted on AfterElton.com about the January death of Doug Blasdell (standing far right in photo), a trainer on Bravo's "Work Out" reality series. On tonight's episode, Bladsell's death is finally addressed (he died before the season premiere but several episodes had already been taped).
AfterElton has an interview with Blasdell's best friend and co-worker Brian Peeler (pictured, below) who wanted to clear up the rumors and speculation and tell the truth about what led to Blasdell's tragic death at the age of 44.
Here is an excerpt:
" I knew Doug was sick shortly after we finished season one. He had lymphoma cancer and he was doing chemo. They caught it in the early stages. It was the same thing that his mother and his father had died from. I think they caught [his] in stage one or stage two.
So he was doing chemo to combat it. And after his birthday, he was supposed to go home with us for Christmas, and he pushed his chemo back because he wanted to do his birthday. He pushed his chemo to the 18th because we were leaving on the 20th, and he was going to be to sick from the chemo to fly and go with us. So he stayed home. And he got salmonella poisoning. And the salmonella poisoning, he treated and thought it was the flu. For three days, he treated it like it was the flu. He dehydrated himself so bad that it shut his kidneys down.
On the 25th he called me and said he wasn’t feeling good and he was going to stay with his friend. And the next thing I know, on the 27th I get a call that he’s in the hospital. His kidneys failed. They put him on a respirator. He’s really bad. And he’s on dialysis every day. It came as a shock to me. The guy said there’s nothing I can do. Just finish my vacation. So when I got home, Doug got off the respirator on January 8th. I made a phone call to him as you will see on the episode. You’ll get to hear the phone call I made to him. And he said he’s feeling better and he’ll be out in two or three days.
Everything is coming around, and he’s got a whole new outlook on life. And then the next thing I know, it’s getting worse. He falls back and gets a staph infection from the dialysis in his neck which ultimately kills his liver and his pancreas. His kidneys are already failing. And his gall bladder is so full of junk. His body was too weak to fight anymore. From the chemo, everything. He didn’t have any fight left, and his body couldn’t recover. So that’s what happened as far as that. His heart stopped. They resuscitated him on Saturday. They said if it happened again, they weren’t going to do it again. So on Sunday, his close friends were around him. I couldn’t be there because it happened too rapidly, [but] they were all around him and his heart slowly went down in beats until it stopped.

To read the entire interview, go to AfterElton.com.