Everything You Need To Know About Donald Glover's 2024 Stroke

In October of 2024, Donald Glover canceled the remainder of his Childish Gambino tour for an undisclosed medical issue, and now a year later, he’s opening up about that health scare.

Glover made the admission while he was on stage at Camp Flog Gnaw on Saturday night, telling the crowd that a really bad headache led to further tests that revealed he suffered a stroke.

“I had a really bad pain in my head in Louisiana, and I did the show anyway. I couldn’t really see well, so when we went to Houston, I went to the hospital, and the doctor was like, ‘You had a stroke,’” Glover explained. “And the first thing I thought was like, ‘Oh, here I am still copying Jamie Foxx.’ That’s really like the second thing. The first thing was like, ‘I’m letting everybody down.’”

The rapper/actor/ producer explained that a domino effect occurred after the stroke discovery, which led to more surgeries.

He added, “I broke my foot, they found a hole in my heart. So I had this surgery, and then I had to have another surgery.”

Glover appears to have made a full recovery, leading to a reckoning in his life, holding on to the old saying, “Everyone has two lives, and the second one begins when you realize you only have one.”

The nearly 3-minute monologue ends there but reminds us of health issues you might think are reserved for the elderly that affect the young. In 2014, 38% of people hospitalized for stroke were younger than 65 years old, and people in Glover’s age group of 18–44 years accounted for only 0.9% of all strokes.

But for Glover, that risk goes up because, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, non-Hispanic Black or African American adults were 50% more likely to have a stroke than non-Hispanic white adults.

It all starts with symptoms, which, for Glover, were a “really bad pain in my head” and “couldn’t really see well.” According to the CDC, severe headaches and sudden trouble seeing are common precursors, as well as:

• Sudden numbness or weakness in the face, arm, or leg, especially on one side of the body.
• Sudden confusion, trouble speaking, or difficulty understanding speech.
• Sudden trouble walking, dizziness, loss of balance, or lack of coordination.

As for the hole in his heart, Gambino’s likely referring to a patent foramen ovale (PFO) or an atrial septal defect (ASD), which is a small “flap-like” opening in the heart’s upper chambers. According to the Mayo Clinic, sometimes a small blood clot can travel through that PFO and into the left side of the heart, which can then travel to the brain and cause an ischemic stroke.

See social media’s reaction to Glover’s health scare below.