TV host Nick Cannon detailed how his ex-wife, singer Mariah Carey, was “the perfect wife” during his lupus diagnosis on the Diary of a CEO podcast.
He discovered he has lupus nephritis in 2012 while still married to Carey and noted how he was living a “dream life” and “married to the most gorgeous, beautiful, super-talented person to ever step on the planet” when the diagnosis came.
Cannon described that he thought he was in good health and worked out regularly but experienced a strange pain in his right side.
He detailed how he attempted to push through the pain while jogging and passed out.
Cannon noted that Carey was the one who found him and rushed him to the hospital, where doctors eventually discovered he had Lupus.
When asked to describe how it affected him, Cannon noted that Carey helped. He said, “She was my rock.”
“To be honest, I probably wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for how hard she went with the doctors, with me, my stubbornness,” he went on.
Cannon then stated, “She was the perfect helpmate, the perfect matriarch, the perfect mom, the perfect wife in those scenarios.”
He credited her for doing all this while handling the pressures of her stardom and also noted that she was “loving enough to take on all of my stuff.”
“It probably took a toll on us just because of the person I was in my head and the struggles that I was dealing with,” he added.
“But it definitely brought us closer together,” he concluded.
Cannon went on to discuss how he struggled with his mortality and asked life questions like, “Am I gonna be able to be here for my children? Am I not gonna be able to be here for my children so therefore what am I leaving for them?”
He noted that situations like that make people come “face to face with your higher power.”
“A lot of people don’t do that because we get caught up in the rat race of just living day-to-day,” he admitted.
Cannon explained how this experience helped him find peace with “the inevitable” and live a purposeful life.
He then referenced his marriage to Carey and expressed a remaining devotion to her, despite their divorce.
He said, “When you find someone that you’re in matrimony with, you know, you go hard for them. I feel like I went hard for her. I’d still go hard… I’d lay down my life for her today.”
He and Carey are the parents of fraternal twins, a boy and a girl.