Billy Joel is opening up about navigating a recent diagnosis.
“I noticed that my balance was not good. I had this sense of being on a boat, like this rocking motion,” Joel, 77, explained on Wednesday, September 9, during SiriusXM’s The Billy Joel Channel. “I wasn’t steady on my feet. I didn’t know why that was and I went to meet with the neurologist, and I was diagnosed with having something called normal pressure hydrocephalus, which they used to call water on the brain.”
Normal pressure hydrocephalus is a condition that occurs when cerebrospinal fluid builds up inside your skull and puts pressure on the brain, according to the Cleveland Clinic. The condition typically occurs in people over the age of 65 and is often treatable, sometimes reversible.
“Nobody’s really sure what causes it, but they’re able to diagnose it and I heard this and I said, ‘Oh, well, what does that mean?’” he said. “’Well, you know, it could be progressive. It could get worse, but what we recommend is that you implant a shunt in your brain.’ I said, ‘Well, what does that entail?’ ‘Well, we drill a hole through your skull and we stick a shunt inside your brain.’ I said, ‘Nah, I think I’ll pass on that.’ I didn’t want to do that.”
Joel, however, “read up on it” and realized that the shunt — which is a flexible plastic tube surgically placed in the brain to drain fluid and alleviate pressure — could “help improve your balance and can help your memory.”
“You know, I don’t want to lose my marbles,” he said. “It’s hard to tell what’s age and what’s a condition, so I agreed to do the shunt and I had a surgery, and they implanted a shunt in my brain and it actually improved things. My memory got better, my balance got a little better, my ability to function was better.”
He continued, “And I realized, and the doctors told me this, because of my job, which is playing rock ’n’ roll music very loud, that it was giving me something like a concussion every time I did a show. It was causing damage to my brain nerves and I could be losing more brain cells the more I played, the more shows I did and I realized that means I shouldn’t be doing this right now. I got to improve.”
Joel shared that his doctors don’t want him to “stress too much,” adding that he’s undergoing physical therapy.
“I’m doing whatever it is they tell me to do because I don’t want to lose it, you know?” he said. “So, I’m always testing myself. I know people have heard, ‘Oh, he’s got a brain disorder,’ and I’m OK. I just want people to know, don’t worry about me. I’m not going anywhere. I’m here. I’m still here.”
