Amy Grant She feels great and grateful after facing two serious health issues in the last four years.

Grammy award-winning 63-year-old singer, open heart surgery continued in 2020 and beyond brain damage He says the events of a bicycle accident in 2022 “changed my perspective on life.”

Grant, who worked with American Heart Association One new campaign “I always saw myself living well into my nineties. My great-grandmother lived to be 94. She had a brilliant mind,” she says of her heart health, before discovering she had heart problems of her own. “Realizing that something can happen and end that you could never have predicted would happen…everything becomes more valuable.”

“Baby Baby” The singer learned about her heart problem only thanks to the doctor’s attention to her singer husband. Vince GillThe 67-year-old, who was experiencing shortness of breath, suggested getting tested himself. He joked, “After I told Vince the ‘wonderful’ news, ‘You’re just fat and out of shape’ – and Vince said, ‘Tell me something I don’t know!’ “The doctor looked at me and said, ‘I want to see you.'”

Tests revealed he had a rare heart defect. PAPVR (partial abnormal pulmonary venous return) is when some of the blood vessels in the lungs connect to the wrong place in the heart. This condition means the heart has to work harder and can cause breathing problems, lung infections, swelling of the heart chambers, or other serious heart problems. In a new PSA, Grant describes it as “a ticking bomb in my chest.”

By that point, Grant knew his heart rate would be high if he exercised and thought he just needed to build endurance. “I just learned to succeed because that’s what women do,” she says. “I was one of those women who said, ‘I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m the Energizer Bunny,’ and then I would have died. And I’m not ready to die.”

According to research, the number one killer of women is cardiovascular diseases. AHAIt causes one-third of the deaths among women every year.

Following his open-heart surgery in June 2020, Grant says he renewed his determination to stay fit by starting regular swim training. “I was probably in the best shape I’ve been in in a long time, maybe 20 years,” Grant says.

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And then, in July 2022, he hit a pothole while riding his bike in Nashville. Even though he wore a helmet, he suffered a brain injury that left him with memory problems for months.

“I would just say: ‘What if I never make it all the way back?’ “Because my transactions were so slow, I could be in the same room with people, but I couldn’t call back,” he says.

But over time, Grant’s memory improved, and he says, “I now feel like I’m in complete control of all my capacities.” He adds: “I write everything on a calendar. But whatever my memory problems, I think it’s appropriate for my age. I’m about to be 64. So I say, ‘I’m just in time.'”

He says his perspective has changed since he became concerned about his health. “I’m finding a different balance between music and family, and I’m trying to be more involved when my adult children allow it,” he says. There is a grant three children From her first marriage to musician Gary Chapman, with whom she has a daughter. Corrina Grant Gill He is 23 years old, whom he shares with Gill. Gill also has a daughter, Jennifer Gill, from his first marriage.

“It made us all look at each other with a kind of appreciation,” says Grant, who begins an annual Christmas concert series with Gill in Nashville later this month, the fourteenth year the couple has taken up the holiday residency. “I think being together was a little bit on autopilot and it doesn’t feel that way anymore.”