Though Dr. Dre is riding high in his career having recently been honored on the Hollywood walk of fame, the Aftermath boss also knows he’s lucky to be here.
During a recent interview on SiriusXM’s This Life of Mine with James Corden, the “Forgot About Dre” artist detailed how his 2021 brain aneurysm began with a simple pain behind his right ear that soon became “the worst pain” he’d ever felt and how some quick thinking ended up saving his life.
“I got up and I went on about my day, and I thought that I could just lay down and take a nap,” Dre said of the initial pain. “My son had a female friend that was there and she was like, ‘No, we need to take you to the hospital.'”
Dre says instead he chose to go to an urgent care facility but was told by staff that his situation was “serious” and he should get to a hospital as soon as possible.
“Next thing you know, I’m blacking out,” the 59-year-old recalled. “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.'”
Things got worse for Dre before they got better. Unbeknownst to him at the time, he had high blood pressure and the condition caused even bigger complications during his hospital stay. Dre said the medical team that took care of him at first wasn’t able to give him the answers he wanted.
“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,” he lamented. “It’s just something that you can’t control that just happens and during those two weeks, I had three strokes,” he said.
“High blood pressure in Black men, that’s just what it is,” he said since learning the condition can be hereditary. “They call it the silent killer. You just have no idea, so you know, you have to keep your s— checked.”
