Bret Michaels made it from his hospital bed to Sunday night’s finale of “The Celebrity Apprentice,” where he was named the winner, but on Monday the rocker admitted “I am not 100 percent back yet” after suffering a life-threatening hemorrhage followed by what doctors called a warning stroke.
Asked by TODAY’s Meredith Vieira whether he had been given the medical green light to attend the reality-show finale, the 47-year-old rocker said, “The doctors said it wasn’t very smart to be here, but I’m not a very smart guy in that capacity.”
Michaels added that when his doctors called the “Celebrity Apprentice” appearance risky, “I was kidding, but I said, ‘With the luck I’ve been having, it seems that getting out of a chair’s a risk lately.’ ”
The TODAY interview came less than 12 hours after Michaels let out a whoop when Donald Trump informed him that he had won $250,000 for his designated charity, the American Diabetes Association. The singer was diagnosed in childhood with type 1 diabetes. In addition to the brain hemorrhage he suffered in April, which came after an emergency appendectomy, and the stroke that put him back in the hospital, he faces surgery for a hole in his heart. Doctors believe Michaels’ various health woes are probably unrelated.
“The minute I knew something exploded in my head, I knew I was in trouble,” Michaels told Vieira of the hemorrhage. “And my family and my daughters — everything just hit me.” Michaels has two daughters, Raine, 10, and Jorja, 5, with girlfriend Kristi Gibson.
“Raine and Kristi were so amazing,” Michaels recalled. “The first thought I had after the pain was, ‘I don’t want to wake up and have my daughters see me unconscious on the floor.’ ”
Vieira noted that Michaels had a visible limp on “Celebrity Apprentice” and asked whether he believed he had won due to sympathy for his many health challenges.
“When Holly walked out with the hot dress on ... I was going to take a vote any way I could get it,” Michaels said, referring to actress Holly Robinson Peete, with whom he became friends on “Apprentice” despite their competition. “Sympathy? Bring it.”
The former front man for rock group Poison had planned to resume a solo tour this month that the brain hemorrhage interrupted, but he told Vieira: “I don’t know that I’m ready yet. I’m going to take it in baby steps, I’m going to do a show and see how it goes. I’ve had so many amazing fans … I’m ready to get out of the hospital and on the road,” he said.
“I’m one of those guys I have to have a goal,” Michaels said, speculating that perhaps that was the “reason that I’m in the 15 to 20 percent that actually survive this [the brain hemorrhage].”