Willie Nelson has opened up about his battle with a deadly disease. As reported by Whiskey Riff, he had contracted COVID-19 in 2022.
He explained exactly how dire his situation was in the run-up to the release of his book, The Last Leaf: Reflections On Late-Life Creativity - And My Longest Love Affair. (In case you're wondering—his "love affair" is music!)
"The backbone of this book is a love story," he said. The book, which is set to release on November 10, has a "heroine", which he describes as his wife, Annie. He says she "kept me alive when I was sure I was gone."
He then went on to open up about how close he was to death in a heartbreaking admission. "COVID nearly got me," he explained. "I was hurting so bad I wanted out... but Annie wouldn't let me go. The years I've lived since then are because of Annie. And so is this book."
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Willie Nelson Had to Use a Nebulizer
In a recent interview published in the New York Times, Willie Nelson and Annie went into even more specific details of that heartbreaking battle back in 2022.
"I had a nebulizer on the bus," Annie recalled. "I started everything I could at that point, including Paxlovid, he had the monoclonal antibodies, he had steroids. We turned the house into a hospital. There were a couple of times when I wasn't sure he was going to make it."
Willie Nelson, a longtime smoker, had an especially hard time with COVID. He described it in a pretty humble way: "COVID ain't nothing to laugh at, that's for sure."
But, the trooper he is, he managed to stave it off. Despite it being akin to a "prison sentence", in his words, he was back to touring after just six days with the disease.
And that's really spurred him on to keep going. Although Annie says that "at the end of every tour, Will talks about retiring," he wants to keep going. Why, you ask? Well, she says, "We both know the answer" if he did retire... he'd "just lay down and die."
