Eric Stevenson (right) ran great the night of April 9 in the Casino Employee Event during the Spring 2024 Poker Palooza Series at Peppermill Reno. No one could touch his stack throughout the night, as he eventually earned the winner’s medal and the $1,900 first-place prize.
Just weeks earlier, Stevenson – a dealer in the casino’s poker room – was lying in a hospital bed, unable to get up, to walk, unable to even feed himself as a staph infection flowing through his bloodstream was attacking his heart.
“It was in my brain, it was everywhere,” said Stevenson. “It was making me hallucinate and do crazy things. People around me thought I was going to die.”
Stevenson said he woke up not feeling well on December 14, and by the end of the day he was admitted to a Reno hospital.
Cathi Wood, Peppermill Reno’s director of poker, said Stevenson did not call in to work, was not answering his phone, and staff in the poker room began getting very worried, for Stevenson was always ready to work. She said one of the poker staff eventually found Stevenson was in the hospital and let everyone know.
Soon after being admitted, hospital tests revealed the staph infection and a cluster developing on one of Stevenson’s heart valves.
Further tests revealed the infection damaged the heart valve so badly it needed replacement. After extensive treatment while remaining hospitalized, surgery was set for February 1, once doctors were confident the infection was fully cleared from his bloodstream.
Transferred into a rehab facility to await surgery, Stevenson was initially still too weak to feed himself or walk from the infection eating away at his muscles, draining his strength.
“If rehab and surgery went well, they thought I would need a walker, or at best use a cane,” he said.
“I did therapy three times a day, I even went to the gym three times the night before the surgery … with surgery set for early in the morning,” he added.
Surgery was successful, with an artificial heart valve replacing the damaged one. A new round of therapy was set, and Stevenson attacked the rehab as hard as the infection attacked his body.
“I was soon able to cycle, do balance drills, two weeks later I was walking without any assistance at all,” he said. “The therapists said I recovered faster than anybody they had ever seen.”
Stevenson sat back while talking about his rehab, looking at the video on his phone of the first day he walked without assistance.
“There were a lot of people believing I was not going to be able to do anything,” he said, “I didn’t realize how bad I was looking then.”
A longtime dealer in the Reno area, he was pitching cards at one time at the Silver Legacy and much earlier when Eldorado Reno had its cardroom. During the pandemic, Stevenson went up to Black Hawk, Colorado and pitched in a pair of poker rooms at two of their 8,900-foot-elevation casinos – Isle and Bally’s (once Golden Gates) – before returning to Reno.
He said he felt strong enough by March 16 to return to work at the Peppermill, a little more than six weeks after heart surgery.
“At first, it was hard getting through a shift, but I feel great now,” he said. “There is a little limp, I can’t run or jog right now. Other than that, I feel great.”
Dan is the founder of PokerLiveUpdates, a veteran poker tournament reporter who can be found wandering somewhat aimlessly through tournament arenas worldwide. As a founding member of FunTour2.0, he searches for the best in craft beer at all locations in the poker world.
