Robbie Williams reveals secret brain horror left him in intensive care for seven days
ROBBIE Williams has revealed he spent seven days in intensive care after doctors discovered “abnormalities” on his brain.
The Angels singer cancelled his Russian tour dates in September due to “illness” and it was later revealed he had been hospitalised.
Now, in a dramatic new interview, Robbie reveals how he became seriously ill while backstage at a stadium in Zurich on September 2.
He told The Sun: “My left arm went numb and I couldn’t stop dribbling out of the side of my mouth.
“I had a headache and I was also having trouble breathing. I couldn’t get a full breath.”
A doctor was called backstage but told the 43-year-old he could continue his massively successful Heavy Entertainment Show tour.
Robbie recalled: “After the show, my arm was still numb and my mouth was still dribbling.
It was very scary. I was sent straight to ICU
Robbie on the moment doctors discovered 'abnormalities' on his brain
“I saw myself as a soldier. I needed to finish what I’d started out, and I was going to go to Russia for the final two shows no matter what shape I was in.”
First he flew to London for emergency tests.
He said: “I had blood tests done, and I had various scans including ones of my heart and my brain, and there were some abnormalities found, including something on my brain that looked like blood.
“That was obviously very scary, so the decision was taken out of my hands and I was sent straight to the intensive care unit.”
He added: “It’s very weird to go from being on tour to suddenly being in intensive care, but that’s where I found myself.”
Wife Ayda Field, 38, was in the US with their children Teddy, five, and Charlie, three.
Robbie went on: “So she couldn’t see me, and there I was in a little bed, attached to tubes.
“But in the ICU I was surrounded by people who were caring for me, in every sense of the word, 24 hours a day.
“I was confused and scared, but I knew I was in the right place. And, maybe naively, I felt like I knew I was going to be OK.
“They monitored me and gave me an MOT, basically. They checked everything out and eventually, after seven days, they said that I was fit to leave the ICU.
“After that, I still had to have a final scan to check that I was okay to fly.”
Robbie, whose new book Reveal chronicles his last ten years, was then allowed to go to Los Angeles to spend two months recovering.
He said: “I was told to do nothing stressful for a few weeks — just to be, and sleep, and treat myself nicely.”
Addict Robbie, off booze now for 18 years, said the terrifying health scare has resulted in him re-evaluating his life.
He explained: “I guess it’s taught me that I’m 43, not 23, and that I need to look after my mind and my body better.
“So I’ve started doing yoga and pilates, and I’ve been meditating.
“I’m a very anxious person, and that had also taken hold of my life, and I needed to find a way to deal with it.
“The whole experience gave me a real scare, because I’ve been in some dark places before but back then I was 23, or I was 27, or I was 32.
“Once you’ve been on the planet for 43 years, you realise that, even if you’ve got everything that I have, you’re not invincible. So from now on I’m going to look after myself a lot more carefully.”
Robbie has opened up about his bid to beat depression, which he admits has “overwhelmed” him at points in recent years and left him feeling “crazy”.
In a gut-wrenchingly emotional episode of the Bizarre Life podcast with Dan Wootton — available to download on Apple Podcasts from Thursday at 8pm — Robbie says he has been “completely derailed” by the recent health issues and the stress of performing to over a million people on tour.
Speaking from his London home, where he said he now lives like a hermit, he said of his mental health battles: “I want to fix it, I want to beat it.
“In these moments, I’m having a really good time, sometimes.
“And then other times I’m not. It’s overwhelming.
“My whole life doesn’t revolve around a depressed neurotic anxious state, but it does feature heavily.”
He went on: “It’s a term that I’ve learnt about myself that may or may not be true, but I’m a procrastinator who just wants to sit on a sofa.
“And I have a disease. It’s called a disease and I use that word loosely. But I have a thing that makes me want to isolate and become a hermit and not go out and not take part in the world and that’s my sort of natural state of being.
It's a constant fight going on in between my ears
Robbie on his battle with depression
“So I obviously, from time to time, let that win and become that person. I could stay there for three years in a row and realise I’ve only been out for my doctors’ appointments.
“So it’s a constant fight to sort of readdress this eternal battle that goes on in between my ears.
“You’re dealing with stuff that’s going on in your mind and you can’t escape from it because it’s there and you’re stuck with it.
“But you kind of think that when you get to the horizon you’ll change and things will be fixed.
“And I realised that at the end of this book, when I put it down that I’m still the same person. And it worried me, you know.”
MOST READ IN BIZARRE
As a result, Robbie is now determined to make positive changes to turn his life and his health around for good.
He said: “Things have got to change, I wasn’t expecting the change to be so quick and so abrupt.
“There are things in place for me now to live a better life than how I was living before."
- Robbie’s book Reveal by Chris Heath is out now. Robbie’s episode of Bizarre Life is available to download from 8pm on Apple Podcasts.