Ed Orgeron accompanied LSU football to its game at Kentucky in his first road trip with the team since a health scare took him away from the Tigers in August, a program spokesperson confirmed Saturday.

Orgeron, the former LSU head coach who’s now working as a special assistant on coach Lane Kiffin’s staff, did not travel with the Tigers for their first road trip of the year: a Sept. 19 loss to Ole Miss. He first started battling an unspecified health issue in mid-August, when Kiffin said he sent Orgeron home from a preseason practice because he “wasn’t feeling real well.”

“It was a little bit scary,” Kiffin said on Sept. 14 after Orgeron missed LSU’s first two games.

Orgeron, 65, was spotted on a recruiting trip in New Orleans last Friday. He dropped in on a matchup between Edna Karr and Brother Martin as part of a push to get the nation’s No. 1 wide receiver, Crusaders’ senior Easton Royal, to flip his commitment from Texas to LSU.

Officially, Orgeron is a special assistant to recruiting and defense. Before he stepped away from the team, he spent time coaching the Tigers’ defensive linemen in preseason camp.

Kiffin said Sept. 14 that Orgeron had returned to the program and that he was spending most of his weekdays around LSU’s football operations building. He was not sure, however, when he’d return to the sideline.

Orgeron watched LSU’s win over McNeese State last Saturday from a suite in Tiger Stadium, the spokesperson said. He’s not expected to appear on the sideline for the game against the Wildcats, which will kick off at 6 p.m. Saturday on ESPN.

“He means a lot to me,” Kiffin said. “We’ve just been through a lot. He probably shouldn’t have joked one day. He said, ‘Hey coach, you know I’m never going to the hospital. If I die, I’m dying on the field out there.’

“That’s who he is. That’s how he is with everything, and sometimes that’s not always the best thing to follow.”

Scott Rabalais contributed to this report.