Doctors began treating Kris Kristofferson with medications that worsened his condition since they suspected his terrible health problems were caused by Alzheimer’s disease.

Kristofferson, now 86, is doing well thanks to an early Lyme disease diagnosis and effective treatment.

He also acknowledges his mortality and wishes to have the first three verses of Leonard Cohen’s song “Bird on a Wire” engraved in his tombstone, despite the fact that he is an immortal celebrity.

The world understood a star had been born the moment Kris Kristofferson released his vocals. His silvery hair, silver eyes, and beautifully maintained beard have earned him a public darling since he began his vocation some 55 years ago.

He argues that the beard was unintentional. Kristofferson told the Guardian, “I developed pneumonia and had to spend a week in the hospital; I didn’t shave the entire time.”

When I first came out, a magazine photographed me and named me “the new face of country music.” Willie has also had a wild appearance since then.

“You know, he didn’t even have a beard back then,” the Marvel’s Blade series star said of Willie Nelson’s beard. My beard was the first in country music history. And he used to punish me for it!”

Among his many talents, the Texas-born Casanova is an Oxford scholar, a defensive back, a boxer, a helicopter pilot, a celebrity actor and musician, and a family man. He also establishes face hair trends.

Kris Kristofferson is one of the truly great wordsmiths of our time, and you won’t be able to replace him.

He joined the military after graduating from Oxford in 1960 before landing a job as a commercial pilot with Petroleum Helicopters International in Louisiana. In his spare time, he sat on an oil platform and wrote songs that became hits, such as “Help Me Make it Through the Night” and “Bobby McGee.”

When the teenage guitarist encountered Johnny Cash while working as a janitor in the recording studio, he took a chance to stand out.

“I discovered him, and so did a lot of other people about the same time,” Cash said about Kristofferson in a prior interview. I acquired a lot of Kris’s songs this way, but one day he flew a helicopter into my yard and dropped off a tape of “Sunday Morning Coming Down” for me.

That’s when I started to give Kris some real thought. When I heard that song and mentioned him on a network television show, he swiftly fled. Later, he hijacked my performance at the Newport Folk Festival and delivered an outstanding performance. I was happy with him.

Even a helicopter couldn’t reach the heights of Kristofferson’s career.

Many of his songs, including “For the Good Times” and “Why Me Lord,” have been covered by singers such as Johnny Cash, Janis Joplin, and Bob Dylan.

In 1985, he co-founded the supergroup The Highwaymen with Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, and Willie Nelson. The title tune from their debut album was selected single of the year by the Academy of Country Music.

“I had to pinch myself every time I was up on stage, or at least at some point during the performance, to make sure I was there.” Every single one of these individuals was my hero before I even met them, said Kristofferson, who worked as a janitor at Nashville’s Columbia Recording Studios one Saturday while Waylon was recording a demo.

He sounded nothing like anything I’d ever heard. Because, although being simply human, or was once, Johnny Cash was always much larger than life. He always looked like he belonged on Mount Rushmore.

His main inspiration is Bob Dylan, who also recorded at the studio Kristofferson cleaned.

“It was an incredible eye-opener to see how he worked,” the “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down” singer recounted of his first encounter with Dylan. I was awestruck by him at the moment. But I never talked to him in any way. I didn’t want to bother him. I was just emptying the garbage cans when I noticed him.

Kristofferson has played several Dylan songs since becoming famous and claims, “He’s still a hero.”

Every artist who has done my song justice has outperformed me. “I suppose Janis singing “Bobby McGee and Me” was the one that affected me because of our relationship,” he said of the singer who was once his sweetheart and died in 1970.

“I had only barely met her before she died. We were, nevertheless, close. Unfortunately, she died lately [when I first heard her performance]. “And it floored me,” he remembered of the woman, whose posthumous album of “Me and Bobby Mcgee” spent weeks at the top of the charts in 1971.

With three wives—singer Rita Coolidge, actress Fran Beer, and his current wife Lisa Meyers—Kristofferson has fathered eight children. He has also dated celebrities like Jane Fonda, Carly Simon, and Samantha Eggar.

Although Kristofferson and Barbara Streisand, his co-star in A Star is Born (1976), had undeniable chemistry, they never got romantically connected. The award-winning rock performer Kristofferson said he was in awe of the extremely well-known Streisand, whose on-screen persona was the aspiring singer. Later, he admitted, “I was scared to death of her,” adding, “It’s exciting to work with someone who has that much talent.”

His health started to deteriorate noticeably in the late 1990s.

Kristofferson’s health was excellent until 1999, when he underwent successful cardiac bypass surgery.

He began exhibiting several incapacitating symptoms in 2004, at which point he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. He was also diagnosed with fibromyalgia, which ought to have been the first clue that a Lyme test was necessary.

Painful spasms spread across Kris’s back and legs, creating severe discomfort. His nerve endings experienced severe contractions the size of golf ball-sized knots due to the acute spasms.

His ailment was treated using various methods, such as massage, heat therapy, and acupuncture. A rheumatologist eventually gave a spinal cortisone injection, and a modest dose of an antidepressant was recommended to ease the agony.

His wife of 40 years, Lisa Meyers, said, “He had painful knees and annual knee shots, a pacemaker for arrhythmias-which we now know could be from Lyme-and so much Advil for headaches that he got anemic.”

“He just didn’t look healthy-looking after a year of taking iron supplements and seeing a hematologist.”

In 2016, after she insisted that her husband visit an integrative physician, he was formally identified as having Lyme disease. He spent a lot of time crawling through the grassy grounds of a Vermont woodland when filming Disappearances (2006), according to Meyers, who believes he got bitten by an infected tick.

The drug for Alzheimer’s and depression, according to Meyers, “he was taking all these medications for things he doesn’t have, and they all have side effects.” Meyers says that Kristofferson recovered following three weeks of Lyme disease treatment. “Suddenly, he came back. It’s simple to overlook that he is even fighting on certain days when he acts completely normal, she said.

However, Kristofferson wants the following words inscribed on his tombstone when the time comes: “Like a bird on the wire, Like a drunk in a midnight choir, I have tried in my way to be free.”

The career of Kris Kristofferson has been incredible! He is truly top-notch as a pilot, scholar, musician, actor, and father!

We are incredibly grateful that he obtained a correct diagnosis and that medical professionals were able to assist him in managing his Lyme disease symptoms.

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