Health Scares Changed Amy Grant’s Perspective on ‘Everything’
Movieguide® Contributor
Artist Amy Grant is feeling thankful after two major health issues in four years.
“The Grammy-winning singer, 63, who underwent open heart surgery in 2020 and then sustained a brain injury in a bike crash in 2022, says the incidents ‘changed the way I look at life,’” PEOPLE reported Nov. 11.
“I always saw myself living well into my nineties. My great-grandmother lived to be 94. She was sharp in the mind,” Grant said. “To realize something can happen that you never see coming, and it could be over…everything became more precious.”
The singer is now working on a campaign with the American Heart Association to advocate for heart health.
She found out about her heart problem at a doctor’s appointment for her husband. It turns out his heart was fine, but hers wasn’t.
The doctor told “Vince the ‘great’ news, ‘You’re just fat and out of shape’” she recalled, “and Vince said, ‘Tell me something I don’t know!’ — the doctor looked at me and said, ‘I want to see you.'”
“Testing revealed that she had a rare heart defect known as PAPVR (partial anomalous pulmonary venous return) in which some of the blood vessels of the lungs attach to the wrong place in the heart,” PEOPLE reported. “The condition means the heart has to work harder and can cause breathing trouble, lung infections, swelling of the heart chambers or other serious heart issues. In a new PSA, Grant describes it as a ‘ticking time bomb in my chest.’”
Grant previously thought all she had needed to do was build more stamina.
“I just learned to push through because that’s what women do,” she says. “I was one of those women who’s like, ‘I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m the Energizer Bunny,’ and then I just would’ve died. And I’m not ready to die.”
She had open heart surgery in 2020 and kept fit by swimming.
“I was probably in the best shape I had been in in a long time, maybe 20 years,” Grant says.
But in 2022, she flew off her bike when she hit a pothole. Even though she had a helmet on, she suffered a brain injury that affected her ability to remember things.
“I would just say, ‘What if I’m never all the way back?’ Because my processing was so slow. I could be in the room with people, but I didn’t have a comeback,” she said.
RELATED: AMY GRANT HAD TO RELEARN HOW TO SING FOLLOWING BIKE ACCIDENT
Today, she feels “fully in control of all my capacity.” She said, “I write everything on a calendar. But whatever memory issues I have, I think are age appropriate. I’m about to be 64. So I’m just going, ‘I’m right on time.'”
The accident also revealed a cyst that had been hiding in her throat.
She said, “I had this bike wreck and, unbeknownst to me, I actually had a cyst growing in my throat, and because of the trauma of that bike wreck it went into hypergrowth. I had this five-hour surgery, and they took it out.”
“I’ve had to be very patient with myself,” Grant, told AARP. “I have had a lot of good, hard cries. And I went through depression. But everybody is recovering from something. That’s life. If nothing else, we recover every day from the shock of what it means to age.”
Since her health scares, she’s taking more time to cherish her time with her family.
“I’m finding a different balance between music and family and just trying to be a lot more involved, as my adult children will allow it,” she said. “This has made us all look at each other with a kind of appreciation. I think being together maybe was a little bit on autopilot, and it doesn’t feel that way now.”
NEXT: AMY GRANT ON GENEROSITY: ‘YOU BECOME SOMETHING BIGGER THAN YOURSELF’
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