Back in 2017, he was diagnosed with cancer, and in order to prevent it from spreading any further, he chose surgery over chemo treatments. Once known for working at a 120-show-per-year pace, Sir Elton John said he found himself “24 hours from death,” and that forced him to reconsider his priorities in life.
“Effectively my kids made the decision for me. I didn’t like the idea of cancer hanging over me—us—for years to come: I just wanted rid of it,” he wrote in his 2019 memoir, simply titled Me.
Sadly, some ten days after the surgery, he began to develop agonizing pain resulting from a complication with his lymph nodes which caused them to leak fluids, as reported by Yahoo. He was on and off hospital for around two and a half months before doctors accidentally cured him. “A routine colonoscopy shifted the fluid permanently, days before my 70th birthday,” John wrote in his book, which was serialized in The Daily Mail.