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On March 10, the supermodel was hospitalized after experiencing stroke-like symptoms related to a blood clot in her brain. In a new video posted to her YouTube channel yesterday, she revealed new details about the “scariest moment of [her] life,” including that she recently underwent heart surgery.
“I was sitting at breakfast with my husband having a normal day, a normal conversation,” she recalled of the morning she was hospitalized. “We were in the middle of talking, and all of a sudden, I felt this really weird sensation that traveled down my arm from my shoulder all the way down to my fingertips, and it made my fingertips feel really numb and weird. … Justin was like, ‘Are you okay?’ And I just didn’t respond because I wasn’t sure, and then he asked me again. When I went to respond, I couldn’t speak. The right side of my face started drooping. … I thought I was having a stroke.”
Bieber was rushed to a hospital via ambulance, but by the time they reached the emergency room, she was no longer experiencing symptoms. After completing scans, doctors found that she had suffered a blood clot in her brain. They also suggested that the blood clot was possibly caused from her use of birth control pills, her recent COVID-19 recovery, and the fact that she had recently been on a long flight in which she didn’t get up to move.
The next day, Bieber was discharged, but sought another opinion from doctors at UCLA. There, they discovered she had a patent foramen ovale (PFO), a small flap-like opening in the heart that forms when a hole in the heart doesn’t close after birth. The UCLA team concluded that Bieber’s blood clot, instead of being absorbed in her lungs, had traveled to her heart and escaped through the PFO to her brain.
They recommended that she undergo a PFO closure procedure, which inserts a catheter into the patient and, through the vein that connects to the heart, inserts a button-like device to close the flap.
“It went very smoothly. I’m recovering really well, really fast,” Bieber revealed. “The biggest thing I feel, honestly, is I just feel really relieved that we were able to figure everything out, that we were able to get it closed, that I will be able to just move on from this really scary situation and just live my life.”
