Chad Gilbert has opened up about how he has battled stage 4 adrenal cancer for the past five years.
For those who don’t know, Gilbert was diagnosed in 2021 with aggressive adrenal carcinoma, which grows on the outer layer of the adrenal gland.
In conversation with PEOPLE magazine, the 45-year-old American guitarist and producer revealed that he was not feeling well at the release party of his band New Found Glory’s twelfth album, Listen up!, in February 2026.
He said the symptoms were very different from what he had been experiencing for five years, joking: “My left leg started getting really weak. And so I thought, ‘I’ll still play the CD release show. Just get me a chair and put me on stage.'”
During his performance in Nashville, Gilbert “played all the songs” and released the record; However, later that evening, things took a dark turn at his home.
“I was on my walker, walking up the stairs to the back of my house, and I just ate it and fell,” he said.
When he reached the hospital, his doctors performed a number of tests and discovered three tumors in his brain, one of which was walnut size. To remove his brain tumors, the Hit or Miss crooner underwent surgery and radiation.
It is pertinent to mention that people with adenoid cystic carcinoma (ACC) or adrenocortical carcinoma have “a much shorter lifespan,” usually lasting six months to a year after diagnosis, but Chad Gilbert has already lived that period.
