Jamie Foxx recently opened up about his health scare during his Netflix special What Had Happened Was.
The comedian shared that he suffered a brain bleed that led to a stroke. His 16-year-old daughter, Anelise, helped him get through while hospitalized at Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta.
“They said at one point, the first 15 days, they thought they were going to lose me because my vitals were out of control,” Foxx said. “There was a 13 or 14-day period where they said, we’ve gotta keep him calm and we’ve given him every medication that they could. It’s not working, we gotta keep him calm because his vitals are so high we’re going to lose him.”
He jokingly added, “Do you know what the worst thing to have in a hospital room when you’re trying to keep calm? Black family members.” Foxx continued, “That’s when a miracle happened, and that miracle was working through my youngest daughter. She’s 14. I didn’t want her to see me like that but she snuck into my hospital room with her guitar and she said, ‘I know what my daddy needs… that’s my daddy.’”
Through tears he continued, “They said when she was playing, my vitals went down. The nurses at the nurses’ station were baffled. Like, ‘Wow what did they give him?’ They rushed into the room and she said, ‘Shh. I got him.’… Do you know what I found out? That God was in that guitar. That’s my spiritual defibrillator.”
Anelise then joined him on stage to play her guitar for the audience. “Play, play, play,” he said to his daughter. “Let them see your talent, shine Anelise, shine baby.” After she was done playing, the actor turned to her and said, “Anelise, thank you so much for stepping up when all was lost.”
“You had to make it because I always dreamed that we’d perform together onstage one day,” Anelise said to her father. During their performance, Foxx sang, “God don’t take me, my oldest daughter’s getting married, please let me walk her down the aisle.” His daughter Corinne, 30, married Joe Hooten in September and Jamie Foxx walked her down the aisle.