Drake White Make Me Look Good Again Lyrics
Drake White took the phase final Friday for an outdoor concert series in Roanoke, Virginia, and immediately started delivering the kind of show the soulful powerhouse has long been known for. Only 15 minutes into his operation, the Alabama native began to stumble, his bandmate quickly catching him before he collapsed to the ground. Fans witnessing the episode became concerned as friends and family closest to White started to pray. Could there exist something seriously incorrect with Drake White?
While the incident shocked many, it came just every bit the "Livin' the Dream" vocalist, 35, was finally prepare to reveal a hugger-mugger wellness battle he's faced for months now: In January he was diagnosed with an arteriovenous malformation (AVM), an abnormal tangle of arteries and veins in the brain that disrupts normal blood flow.
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"It was basically stealing claret from my brain," White told PEOPLE in an exclusive interview in July, just weeks earlier his onstage scare. "The neurologist told me that I should be thankful it was caught in time, because it could have caused a stroke."
Drake White
| Credit: Zack Knudsen
Since and then, he'southward been undergoing a series of embolization procedures to cut off blood flow to the affected vessels — the terminal just iv days earlier he came close to collapsing. Though it is still unclear if his near-autumn was directly related to that procedure or his condition, the musician had already decided that it was time to share the details of the grueling medical journey he's been on since the start of the year.
"I'm not telling this story for me," White told PEOPLE final month. "Someone needs to hear it and God wants me to share it. It will help people believe in miracles, and I will feel that energy. The world needs that kind of free energy correct at present."
Drake White
| Credit: Erika Goldring/WireImage
White'due south wellness ordeal began over the winter. He was at home in Nashville and developed a headache — ane that wouldn't go away.
"That forenoon, I had worked out and went to a lunch meeting, and that's when the headache started," White recalled. "By 2 p.m. I was in bed seeing spots in my left eye, and that's when my left side started going numb. I tried to sleep it off merely woke upwardly with the same intense headache."
Alarmed, the "Makin' Me Look Good Again" vocalist headed to the emergency room with his wife of five years, Alex.
"The true nightmare is having something wrong with you and not knowing what it is," admitted White, who — along with his band The Big Burn down — has toured with artists including Willie Nelson, Dierks Bentley, Zac Brown Band, Eric Church and Kip Moore throughout the years. "Nobody could tell me what was wrong."
After undergoing an "excruciating" MRI as well as an angiogram, White and his wife anxiously awaited the official diagnosis. "I definitely had some 'Oh s—' moments on the side of my bed at ii in the morning," White said of the days before learning of his condition, which doctors believe he's probable had since birth.
Finally, the test results were in and answers arrived — it was a brain arteriovenous malformation.
"The next thing I know, there is a guy walking in with the discussion 'neurologist' on his nameplate. He told me, 'You lot have a mass in the back of your head. It'southward treatable, simply it'south going to take a while.' Information technology was at that moment Alex and I said to each other that whatever it is, we would battle through it. Our religion went into overdrive."
Drake White in July
| Credit: Courtesy Drake White
A serial of embolization procedures were scheduled. White described the crucial operations as neurosurgeon Dr. Robert Mericle at Centennial Hospital in Nashville "running a catheter through my femoral arteries all the way upwards to the back of my head to glue the AVM shut."
At present, 8 months and 4 embolizations after — the nigh recent taking place on Aug. 12, four days before his almost-plummet — White told PEOPLE that Dr. Mericle is confident that they have "knocked out 75% of the mass."
"He has to space them out due to my encephalon existence used to the amount of claret menstruation for 35 years," White explained, calculation that he hoped to be AVM-costless by the end of 2019. "If he had embolized the whole mass in i surgery, it would cause major problems with my mobility and perhaps a stroke."
While undergoing the embolization procedure, White had kept upwards his touring schedule, often appearing onstage merely days subsequently a treatment. "There was a show in Apr that I played 48 hours after surgery," he said. "And that was very therapeutic to me. Emotionally it made me realize that I could notwithstanding practise this. Maybe I wasn't jumping around similar I unremarkably do, but I was doing information technology."
Simply going forward the star will exist taking information technology a chip easier on himself. And as he and Alex await farther examination results and news on his condition and prognosis, they volition exist relying on their organized religion to run into them through. "Drake and I are grateful to God and all he has done," said Alex, 33, speaking to PEOPLE from her husband'south bedside on Monday. "He has worked miracles in the last 24 hours."
Alex and Drake White
| Credit: Courtesy Drake White
And while White joked near life afterward his surgeries are consummate — "I'g adamant that once it'southward all done, I will be able to run faster and play guitar better and become Alex pregnant immediately" — he admitted that the experience has left him a changed man. He finds himself filled with profound gratitude as well as a deepened faith — both of which he hopes will be axiomatic in his life and his music going forward.
"My attitude is meliorate. From the moment I constitute out, I refused to see it equally a problem. Rather, I chose to let it inspire me and help others. I have to recollect I've been going through all of this for a reason," White said. "Everyone is going through something. You have to treat every person like it could be their final day. Non to be all sunshine and rainbows, just all of this fabricated me appreciate all that I accept and all that is to come up."
For more than on Drake White and arteriovenous malformations, pick upwardly the latest upshot of PEOPLE, on newsstands everywhere Friday.
Source: https://people.com/country/drake-white-arteriovenous-malformation-diagnosis/