Amy Grant is reflecting on her health after undergoing open-heart surgery and suffering a brain injury following a bike crash, with both incidences happening in the past four years.
The “Baby, Baby” singer, 63, said her recent health scares have “changed the way I look at life.”
Grant has joined a campaign for the American Heart Association following her surgery in 2020.
“I always saw myself living well into my nineties. My great-grandmother lived to be 94. She was sharp in the mind,” she told People in an interview published on Monday. “To realize something can happen that you never see coming, and it could be over…everything became more precious.”
Grant shared that before she discovered her heart issues, she “always saw myself living well into my nineties. My great-grandmother lived to be 94. She was sharp in the mind.”
“To realize something can happen that you never see coming, and it could be over…everything became more precious,” Grant continued.
The Grammy winner’s heart problem was only discovered after a doctor suggested she be tested when her husband, singer Vince Gill, 67, was experiencing shortness of breath.
“After giving Vince the ‘great’ news, ‘You’re just fat and out of shape’ — and Vince said, ‘Tell me something I don’t know!’ — the doctor looked at me and said, ‘I want to see you,’” Grant explained.
The additional testing showed the “Every Heartbeat” singer had PAPVR (partial anomalous pulmonary venous return), a rare defect in which some of the lungs’ blood vessels attach to the wrong place in the heart. Having this condition means the heart has to work overtime, and it can lead to lung infections, breathing trouble and other serious issues, per the Mayo Clinic.
Grant said she had a “ticking time bomb in my chest.”
“I just learned to push through because that’s what women do,” she said before she learned her diagnosis. “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.”
Grant started regularly swimming following her open-heart surgery and now says she’s “in the best shape I had been in in a long time, maybe 20 years.”
But her heart condition hasn’t been her only health-related issue.
In July 2022, Grant hit a pothole while riding her bike in Nashville and sustained a brain injury despite wearing her helmet. The incident left her with lingering memory issues for months.
“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 shared.
While the singer’s memory has improved, she writes “everything on a calendar.”
However, she’s using humor to make light of the situation.
“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,’” Grant shared.
Since her health issues, she’s refocusing her priorities.
“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.
Grant has three kids from her first marriage to musician Gary Chapman. She shares a biological daughter, Corrina Grant Gill, 23, with Gill, whom she married in 2000.
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