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After heart attack, KO Dynasty's Mickey Dubberly spreading word of MPD
Mickey Dubberly woke up on a late March morning with a discomfort in his chest.
It was the same strange feeling he had experienced several months before, when a visit to an urgent-care facility produced a prescription to ease the pain.
But by 9 a.m., the pain was back. Dubberly's wife, who had lost her mother to a heart attack, urged her husband out of the bed and to the emergency room immediately.
"She went up to the desk and, 'You need to take care of my husband right now,'" Dubberly, CEO of the MMA management agency KO Dynasty, told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com).
The ER visit began a weeklong stay in the south Florida hospital to treat a minor heart attack, a diagnosis of a relatively unknown blood disorder that causes clotting and potentially life-threatening effects of clotting, now-regular visits to blood doctors and a campaign to educate a wider population on the disorder.
In all, there are four myeloproliferative disorders (MPD), and Dubberly's is the least serious. The disorders are slow-growing blood cancers in which the patient has high levels of red and white blood cells and platelets that cause the dangerous clotting.
His mild heart attack at age 32, which took the aggressive manager away from his stable of 50 or so fighters for some weeks and therefore made his desired family-like atmosphere more difficult, has led Dubberly to place awareness reminders on his fighters' shorts and find a national MPD foundation to support.
Now back to his day-to-day operations, Dubberly reflected recently on the experience and reiterated that he wants more people to know that regular blood pressure checks and simple blood tests can prevent a near-nightmare situation like the one he experienced and that nearly threatened his life.
"Guys don't want to go and get their blood done. I'm like that too," Dubberly said. "I would tell them to go get their blood checked, go get blood pressure checked. That's all you have to do, just keep doing that. You don't want to wind up in a hospital and have a couple-hundred-thousand-dollar bill."
Financial world to MMA
Dubberly doesn't have a personality that likes to be slowed.
By age 20 he received his stock broker's license and started a career in the financial world that would soon provide him the financial freedom to pursue his interest in MMA. Dubberly went through a series of successful business ventures, from stocks to mortgages.
After another few years and more success, Dubberly began contacting fighters for sponsorship opportunities. He soon had his company's mark on 15 fighters.
"I know how it sounds; how many people are looking for a mortgage on UFC, right?'" Dubberly said with a laugh. "I didn't care. I enjoyed helping the fighters."
As he talked to more fighters, Dubbely got the sense that many of them weren't finding the type of relationships they wanted in a search for a stable manager. Now financially stable from other interests, Dubberly decided to try managing, feeling he had the experience in dealing with people and enough knowledge of business and personal relationships to help the young fighters.
Since, Dubberly has built his KO Dynasty into one of the most respected MMA management firms in dealing with up-and-coming fighters. By March, things were really moving at the business.
"We were really peaking," Dubberly said.
Then the discomfort started in his chest.
The fight with MPD
At first, it seemed small, a discomfort in the chest and a tingling in the fingers five months ago that felt like someone was lightly tapping a hammer on the digits.
Dubberly's wife encouraged him to visit urgent care, where he learned his blood pressure was high, which was somewhat odd for a young guy who kept in shape and watched his diet.
"The guy said, 'Maybe you're nervous,'" Dubberly said. "They did the EKG, and everything checked out. They drew some blood and found out I had high blood platelets."
Dubberly's count was near 1 million, while the normal count is about 300,000. He visited a blood specialist.
"He said, 'Take these pills; everything will be fine,'" Dubberly said. "A few months later I had my heart attack."
It was after the March incident that Dubberly finally had his condition diagnosed, and he and his wife searched to learn more about MPD. They discovered that almost anyone can have MPD, that there is no general profile for a patient, and that the clotting can be life-threatening if unnoticed and untreated.
Bob Rosen, chairman of the MPD Foundation, said about 175,000 people in the U.S. have been diagnosed with MPD (including Rosen). There seems to be no profile for the common MPD patient, as a variety of ages, professions and walks of life are affected.
"We've tried to look for common denominators," Rosen said, "but we can't seem to find any."
Dubberly is hoping to use his place in the MMA world to educate more people on MPD. He hopes to convince them to have their blood pressure checked and their blood tested at least once a year to test for MPD and other disorders that otherwise have few symptoms.
He wants to prevent someone else from experiencing what he did - the fear that comes with a heart attack, the medical bills, the time away from his businesses and his fighters, with each of whom he has worked to build a special relationship.
"They've said, 'You'll live a very long life, and once you learn more you'll be more comfortable,'" said Dubberly, who added he's taking about a dozen pills per day to treat the condition. "I want to make sure no one experiences what I did and catches it earlier."
(Pictured: Mickey Dubberly and client Spencer Fisher)
Source: Yahoo Sports
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