Lil Troy faced not one but two terrifying health scares in a single weekend. As the 57-year-old rapper was recovering in the hospital from a massive heart attack, his mother suffered a stroke while he was on the phone with her.
The ordeal forced Lil Troy to confront his mortality and made him realize how urgently Black families need to take health concerns seriously.
It all began with Troy receiving a wake-up call about his dietary habits and high blood pressure, which led to an emergency hospitalization following a heart attack.
“I ate all this fried chicken, up all night drinking—that’s what I did,” Lil Troy told Fox 26 News. “I was a rapper, so I was up all night drinking and everything else, not taking care of my body.”
The 57-year-old artist had been experiencing shortness of breath and swollen feet, symptoms that spurred a visit to the doctor. It was then he discovered he had suffered a heart attack days earlier.
“I thought I was Superman,” he confessed. “I wasn’t taking my medicine, thinking I could keep going without eating right.”
Doctors found a 97 percent blockage in one of his arteries and performed surgery to insert a stent. Lil Troy’s ordeal didn’t end there. While recovering in the hospital, he was on the phone with his mother when she suddenly had a stroke.
“I was in the hospital that Saturday and I called my mom on the phone, just talking to her in general, and she had a stroke while I was on the phone with her,” Troy recounted. “I had to call the ambulance and everything. They brought her to the same hospital I was at on the same floor.”
Faced with the possibility of losing both his life and his mother’s in the span of a week, Troy was deeply affected: “I almost lost me myself and my mom at the same time.”
Reflecting on the crisis, Troy realized the severity of his lifestyle choices.
“You got to change your whole lifestyle. My whole lifestyle changed. I don’t smoke cigars no more, I don’t drink no more,” he revealed.
His story serves as a cautionary tale, particularly for Black men who often avoid seeking medical attention. Now an advocate for heart and stroke awareness, Lil Troy hopes his story will inspire others in the Black community to take their health seriously.
“As Black men, we don’t like going to the doctor. We think we can do it on our own,” he said. “We have to start listening to our bodies and go to the doctor. I don’t mind taking my 12 pills a day now if it means I’ll live another 30 or 40 years,” he noted.
With his renewed lease on life, Lil Troy aims to use his platform to emphasize the importance of regular health check-ups and self-care: “God wasn’t done with me. I have more to do and more to share, especially with my people.”