Three years after experiencing a brain aneurysm, Dr. Dre is reflecting on the health struggles he’s faced ever since.
via People:
In a new interview on SiriusXM’s This Life of Mine with James Corden, the rapper and record producer opened up about having “three strokes” while in the hospital for his 2021 brain aneurysm and how the experience made him “appreciate being alive.”
Looking back on how the ordeal began, Dr. Dre recalled waking up with an abnormal feeling behind his “right ear,” which soon turned into “the worst pain” he’d ever endured. “I got up and I went on about my day, and I thought that I could just lay down and take a nap. My son had a female friend that was there and was like, ‘No, we need to take you to the hospital,'” he said.
Dre opted to go to an urgent care facility instead, but the doctors said his situation was too “serious” and required a trip to the hospital. “Next thing you know, I’m blacking out. I’m in and out of consciousness, and I ended up in the ICU. I was there for two weeks,” he detailed. “I’m hearing the doctors coming in and [saying,] ‘You don’t know how lucky you are.'”
At the time, the Death Row Records co-founder questioned whether he could’ve “prevented” the aneurysm by focusing harder on his physical health. “Nobody could give me an answer. I had no idea that I had high blood pressure or anything like that because I’m on my health s—. I’m lifting weights, I’m running, I’m doing everything I can to keep myself healthy,” said Dre.
Ultimately, the Grammy winner learned the condition was “hereditary” and unpreventable. “High blood pressure in Black men, that’s just what it is. They call it the silent killer. You just have no idea, so you know, you have to keep your s— checked,” he advised.
Such an intense experience could lead others to shift their outlooks on life, but Dre hasn’t made any “significant” changes since. “I’m not saying, ‘OK, I’m just gonna go f—ing crazy because who knows if the lights are gonna come out tomorrow.’ I don’t think about it like that,” he said. “I just think it was something that just happened to me.”
However, he felt such a health scare “makes you appreciate being alive” more than before. “When you go through that situation, it’s crazy especially when I was on my way home from the hospital because possibly, that couldn’t have happened,” reflected Dre. “It’s crazy, so now knowing that I had no control over that. It’s just something that could happen out of the blue. You wake up and you go, ‘S—. OK, I’m here.'”
Dre then revealed his condition grew more difficult before he was in the clear. “It’s just something that you can’t control that just happens and during those two weeks, I had three strokes,” he said.
In 2022, Dre’s longtime collaborator Eminem spoke about how the Beats Electronics founder’s hospital stay led him and Snoop Dogg to end their feud.
“Me and Snoop had our little issue and then when Dre, when that thing happened with Dre, the brain aneurysm thing….” the “Without Me” performer, 51, told his longtime manager Paul Rosenberg on SiriusXM’s Paul Pod: Curtain Call 2. “We were like, bro this is stupid. This is stupid as hell to be feuding right now. So I don’t remember if I called him, or he called me, I can’t remember, but we talked it out.”
He’s truly lucky to be alive.
