"They couldn't tell whether the [lung] cancer had returned or whether I just had pneumonia," he continued. "They had to wait until they got the pneumonia under control before we could tell. So it's been kind of a tough couple of weeks, but I've got so many people to thank."

And Haggard did, in fact, take the opportunity to genuinely thank a long list of the people, most notably Gene Autry's widow Jackie, who encouraged him to go to the hospital. "Without her I might not be alive," he admitted.