Michaels Thought Haemorrhage Was A Bullet In The Head

POISON star BRET MICHAELS thought he had been “shot in the head” when he suffered the brain haemorrhage which left him fighting for his life last month (Apr10).

The rocker, 47, was admitted to the intensive care unit of St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix, Arizona on 21 April after suffering bleeding on the brain, just days after enduring complications following an appendectomy.

Doctors later discovered Michaels suffered a life-threatening side-effect of the condition called hyponatremia - a lack of sodium in the body that can lead to seizures.

He is now in a stable condition, has been discharged from hospital and is expected to make a full recovery - but Michaels admits he was caught completely off-guard when he was struck down by the bleed.

He tells People magazine, “I thought someone shot me in the back of the head, like a burglar. It was the most severe, instant pain I’ve ever felt in my life.

“All day long I’d been feeling a little out of it. I thought it was just from the appendectomy and pain medicine. And then when (the haemorrhage) happened, it sounded like a handgun, like it literally popped. It made my mind go almost blank. My neck tensed up. I couldn’t move my head at all.”

Michaels was at the Arizona home he shares with his girlfriend Kristi Gibson and their two daughters when the incident happened, but he was determined to survive the terrifying health scare for his family’s sake, despite being unable to call for help.

He says, “I knew I was in trouble. I was not going to have my family wake up and see me dead on the living room floor. I don’t know what I was doing, but I was pacing because I just did not want to lie back down… But I couldn’t yell because it hurt too bad.”

The singer is convinced he’s still alive because it “wasn’t (his) time” to die - but he’s thankful he was at home and near help instead of out on tour - where he was originally scheduled to be.

He adds, “In a weird way God intervened: the appendicitis forced me to come home for a couple days. Otherwise I could’ve been on my tour bus at a truck stop somewhere, nowhere near a medical centre. Of all the ways that I thought I could go out, that wasn’t one of them. Definitely not the rock star way to go out.”

Michaels cancelled a string of U.S. tour dates after suffering complications from his appendix surgery.