According to the medical professionals at Cedars-Sinai hospital, Dr. Dre is lucky to be alive today after suffering a brain aneurysm that resulted in a series of strokes.
The rapper and superproducer appeared on the latest episode of SiriusXM show This Life of Mine with James Corden, where he reflected on his terrifying medical emergency. In 2021, Dr. Dre was admitted to the Los Angeles hospital, where he was taken after waking up and feeling "the worst pain" behind his right ear.
“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 recalled.
After being taken to urgent care, Dre was told that his condition was "serious."
“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 said. "I’m hearing the doctors coming in and saying, ‘You don’t know how lucky you are.'”
Surviving the aneurysm and strokes gave Dr. Dre a new lease on life, as the seemingly healthy former N.W.A. member discovered that he had high blood pressure.
“Nobody could give me an answer," he said, regarding asking doctors about brain aneurysm prevention. "I had no idea that I had high blood pressure or anything like that because I’m on my health shit. I’m lifting weights, I’m running, I’m doing everything I can to keep myself healthy."
“High blood pressure in Black men, that’s just what it is. They call it the silent killer,” he added. “You just have no idea, so you know, you have to keep your shit checked.”
In regards to his lifestyle, Dr. Dre said he wasn't sure if the brain aneurysm made a “significant change," but he admitted that the experience “definitely makes you appreciate being alive, that’s for sure.”
“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, ‘Shit. OK, I’m here,'" he said.
In 2022, Dr. Dre appeared on podcast Workout the Doubt, where he said doctors notified his family to say their last goodbyes during his two-week hospitalization.
“I’m at Cedars-Sinai hospital and they weren’t allowing anybody to come up, meaning visitors or family or anything like that, because of COVID, but they allowed my family to come in,” he said at the time. “I found out later, they called them up so they could say their last goodbyes because they thought I was out of here.”
Fortunately Dre's family didn't need to say goodbye in the end, and the icon is still with us today.
