Ozzy fans were stunned when the Prince of Darkness had to cancel the final four days of his farewell U.S. tour recently, due to some emergency hand surgery.
While the Osbournes were mum about the situation initially, now that things have cooled down Ozzy revealed to Rolling Stone that it one day he noticed his thumb was “the size of a fuckin’ lightbulb” and Sharon made him go to the emergency room. The staph infection could've been deadly!
“I didn’t feel sick, so I was cracking jokes,” he says. “The doctor said, ‘I don’t know if you realize, Mr. Osbourne, this is a very serious problem you have.’ Sharon said, ‘Would you stop fucking making jokes?'” He laughs. “So I said, ‘Well, it’s my hand.'” The thing was, nobody was laughing. “They’re all extremely, deadly serious about it,” he says. “I judge it based on the expression and the body language of the doctor. If he comes in with a really solemn face, I go, ‘Oh, OK. My time to go is up.'” He laughs.
Doctors eventually realized he had THREE staph infections on his thumb, and one of the infections spread to his middle finger. A staph infection occurs when germs on a person's skin make it into their blood stream, and it could potentially turn deadly.
Ozzy explained the gross process:
“You put your thumb in front of your face on your right hand, they went in by the side of the nail on the left side for the flesh under the nail,” he says. “They cut all this stuff out. Even with the numbing stuff, it was agony. It wasn’t pus, but it was the stage after pus, when it gets in the blood and goes in your body and fucking kills you. It may sound fucked up what I’m saying to you, but he was really concerned about checking my blood.”
“The doctor said to me, ‘Can you remember talking to someone and shaking hands?'” Osbourne recalls. “Well, I do that meet and greet at the gig and I must shake fucking 200 hands a day. He said, ‘That explains it.'”
While Ozzy was feeling woozy after surgery, the only thing that really got him up and going again was ice cream. Hence the above photo. Ozzy added that he's currently feeling about "85 to 90 percent better," and is eager to return to the stage.
Earlier today, it was announced Ozzy will be playing a special New Year's Eve show in Los Angeles.
