Dr. Dre is making sure that every day counts after his brain aneurysm in 2021.
The 59-year-old rapper and producer recalled his health scare and revealed that he suffered three strokes while he was hospitalized during a recent interview on SiriusXM’s This Life of Mine With James Corden.
“It’s just something that you can’t control that just happens, and during those two weeks I had three strokes,” Dre said, per The Hollywood Reporter.
On the day he was hospitalized, the Grammy winner recalled waking up with a strange sensation behind his right ear that soon developed into “the worst pain.”
“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,'” Dre said. “So they took me to urgent care.”
He learned there that he was in “serious” condition. “Next thing you know, I’m blacking out. I’m in and out of consciousness, and I ended up in the ICU,” Dre said. “I was there for two weeks. I’m hearing the doctors coming in and saying, “You don’t know how lucky you are.'”
When he asked if he could have done anything to prevent the aneurysm from happening, the Death Row Records co-founder recalled, “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 said. “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.”
While Dre wasn’t certain if the scare provoked a “significant change” in his life, he did say “it definitely makes you appreciate being alive, that’s for sure.”
“It’s crazy… knowing that I had no control over that,” he said. “It’s just something that could happen out of the blue. You wake up and you go, ‘S—. Okay, I’m here.'”
At the time of his hospitalization, Dre confirmed on Instagram that he was “doing great” and planned to be discharged soon. A day after he was released from the hospital, the musician appeared in a photo that producer Focus posted showing him already back in the recording studio.
“My big Bro is Super Good!!!” Focus captioned the post. “We Working…”