Yahoo! Entertainment caught up with Poison frontman Bret Michaels and he reflected on the 10th anniversary of his near-fatal brain hemorrhage.
Here’s what he said:
“It’s called a Thunderclap, so you can’t explain it. It just the weirdest sound. If anyone’s never broken a bone and you hear a sound inside your body, when you hear that sound, it was instant and it was instantly I knew something like it. The pain is like an elephant standing on your skull. That’s what a brain bleed does.
He added:
“The pressure is what normally kills you eventually. And so I knew I was in trouble and my adrenaline — after years and years of being diabetic through some horrific situations — immediately my adrenaline was on 10.
“I could barely speak. I knew I’d had some form of a stroke because my face was drooping and I knew it was bad. I got rushed straight down to the emergency room and they knew instantly and they did the MRI. And then I went from that over to [Phoenix’s Barrow Neurological Institute], and I don’t remember for three days.
“I came back around to a nurse, and they’re massaging your legs so you don’t get a blood clot. … I never would have thought that was gonna happen. Like, that wouldn’t have been on my plate of stuff.”