In January 2021, famed music producer and rapper Dr. Dre suffered a brain aneurysm that landed him in the ICU for two weeks. Recently, he revealed in an interview on SiriusXM that during his stay in the hospital, he suffered three strokes.
The incident caught Dre by surprise. He recalled feeling a sudden and intense pain behind his right ear, which he initially dismissed as nothing serious. However, after collapsing at home, he was rushed to the hospital by his son and a friend of his son’s, who recognized the severity of the situation.
“I just woke up and I felt something right behind my right ear,” he recalled. “Worst pain I ever felt. And 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. [She was] like, ‘No, we need to take you to the hospital.’ So they took me to urgent care. And I got to urgent care, and they’re like, ‘No this is serious.’”
“Next thing you know I’m blacking out. I’m in and out of consciousness, and I end up in the ICU,” he explained.
“I was there for two weeks,” he shared. “I’m hearing the doctors coming in, [saying] ‘You don’t know how lucky you are.'”
His stay in the ICU was a wake-up call for Dre, who had no prior knowledge of having high blood pressure, a common risk factor for brain aneurysms. Despite his active lifestyle of weightlifting and running, the condition was hereditary and often goes undetected in Black men.
“I had no idea that I had high blood pressure or anything like that,” adding that he was actively lifting weights and running to stay in physical shape at the time of his aneurysm. “I said, ‘Would that have prevented it, if I had worked out a little bit harder or ate different or something like that?’”
The rapper admits that the experience has made him appreciate life more. He couldn’t help but think about what could have been if he hadn’t made it to the hospital in time. It’s a situation that he had no control over, and the knowledge that something like this could happen out of the blue is a sobering thought.
“It definitely makes you appreciate being alive, that’s for sure, when you go through that situation,” he told Corden of the ordeal. “It’s crazy. Especially when I was on my way home from the hospital because, possibly, that couldn’t have happened.”
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The incident speaks on the dangers of high blood pressure, often referred to as the “silent killer” because it is symptomless in many cases. It is crucial for everyone, especially those with a family history of the condition, to regularly monitor their blood pressure and take proactive measures to manage it.
