It’s not every day that a rock musician - let alone Bret Michaels, best known as the bandanna-clad frontman of the ’80s rock band Poison - talks about finding “balance.” But for Michaels, who has type 1 diabetes, finding that balance can be a matter of life and death.

“Diabetes is a very complicated disease,” Michaels tells Yahoo Lifestyle. “When you’re diabetic, there’s this everyday balance. The pancreas is no longer secreting the amount of insulin you need to cover the food intake, your carb intake. This is an incurable disease. You treat it with medication and with doing the right thing to stay healthy.”

The 55-year-old singer has been coping with the disease for most of his life. At 6 years old, Michaels blood sugar levels were running “incredibly high,” although no one knew it at the time. His parents, worried about their son’s health, took him to the emergency room where he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. “At that point, I was severely going into ketoacidosis, which … your body at that point is starting to shut down,” he says.

Michaels, who has been getting daily insulin shots since then, remembers being the only kid in his Pennsylvania school who had diabetes. “I remember having low blood sugar and passing out,” Michaels recalls. Some parents at Michaels’s school mistakenly believed at the time that diabetes was contagious and didn’t allow their kids around him. “I just wanted to be a normal kid,” he says.

Read more and view a video report at Yahoo Lifestyle.

On Friday March 15, 2019 Bret Michaels celebrates his birthday with you and comes into your home or mobile device via a livestream Stage It performance. This annual birthday bash event is an opportunity for fans to interact with Bret during the performance in what will be a party of epic proportions.

A portion of the proceeds from the event goes to charity via Bret Michaels’ Life Rocks Foundation. There will also be some extra special items that will be auctioned off using NOTES, including Bret’s signed hat, shirt and more to be announced.

This is event is happening 100% live and will never be shown again. Only 200 tickets will be sold and once they are gone, they are gone.

Last year this event sold out in record time, don’t miss your chance to celebrate Bret’s birthday together and you could win an awesome piece of rock ‘n’ roll memorabilia.

Get Stage It tickets by clicking here.

Note: Once you are registered and have your ticket you will notice that you have something called NOTES which are the equivalent of money in Stage It setting. You can purchase as many NOTES as you want.

* Prior to or during the show you can use your NOTES to tip the artist. At the end the night the highest tippers will be the winners of these great prizes.

* Your ticket price is factored into your total NOTES (also combined with your tips).