Having just had part of his right leg amputated as a result of a lengthy battle with Type II diabetes, Andre “Doctor Dre” Brown” is now the subject of a GoFundMe campaign to raise the money necessary for his full recovery and care.
A multi-talented performer who made his mark in a number of media over the course of 25 years, Dre is best known as the co-host of “Yo! MTV Raps” (1989-1995), the groundbreaking television show that introduced rap and hip-hop to the world at a time when most mass media, including MTV itself up until that point, shunned the burgeoning African-American youth culture. In an interview with TV Guide in 2019, Doug Herzog, an executive at Viacom, MTV’s parent company, recalled, “The impact of “Yo!” was immediate and massive. It changed everything. It was a gigantic cultural shift.”
In addition to his work on “Yo!,” Dre distinguished himself on the radio, in the movies and in print, working successively as a hip-hop DJ, composer, recording artist, talent scout, on-air personality, actor, author, and critic. Behind the scenes, Dre has been struggling with the effects of advanced Type II diabetes for a decade-and-a-half. In 2016 he announced that the illness had robbed him of his eyesight. Recently, Dre’s condition took a turn for the worse.
On Memorial Day of this year, he slipped and fell down a flight of stairs at his home and badly damaged his right ankle. The diabetes had already caused a serious decline in the function of that foot, but this new injury required hospitalization and surgery.
On June 17, the foot was amputated. On June 24, his right leg was amputated up to the knee. He has since been fitted with a prosthetic and is now learning how to walk with it. Dre has been recovering at a rehab enter since July 1. Just where he and his wife will settle afterwards is still being decided. The house they live in now doesn’t accommodate someone with Dre’s health issues.
The pair plan to buy a new house better suited to Dre’s needs today, one with all the facilities on one floor, no stairs, ramps for a wheelchair, and wide-access doors. Given all of Dre’s high-profile achievements, one might assume that he and his family had all the money necessary to pay for his care. But diabetes cut short his career nearly 15 years ago, and it’s been a full ten years since he lost his eyesight. Dre’s insurance stopped paying for his stay in the rehab center on July 20.
When he leaves the rehab center for home – wherever that turns out to be — he’ll require the care of both a physical therapist and an occupational therapist, neither of whose fees will be fully covered by insurance. With these realities in mind, Dre’s family has launched a GoFundMe campaign in his name: https://www.gofundme.com/f/PostOp-Care-doctor-dre-go-fund-me
