Rocker Jesse Malin has opened up about his recent and sudden paralysis after having suffered a rare spinal stroke last month.
In conversation with Rolling Stone, the D Generation vocalist recalled the incident, which took place on May 4 while at a celebratory dinner in New York City’s East Village. He suddenly felt a burning pain in his lower back that slowly began to move into his hips, thighs, and heels. Collapsing onto the restaurant floor, he was unable to walk.
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“Everybody was standing above me like in Rosemary’s Baby, saying all these different things, and I was there not knowing what was going on with my body,” he told the outlet. He has been paralyzed from the waist down since that night.
The musician spent two weeks at Mount Sinai undergoing various spinal procedures before being transferred to where he is now, a rehab center at NYU. His days currently consist of physical therapy and rehabilitation as he learns how to do daily tasks without the use of his legs. He is set to be discharged later this month and will be in a wheelchair.
“This is the hardest six weeks that I’ve ever had,” he explained. “I’m told that they don’t really understand it, and they’re not sure of the chances. The reports from the doctors have been tough, and there’s moments in the day where you want to cry, and where you’re scared. But I keep saying to myself that I can make this happen. I can recover my body.”
The artist has regularly lived by something he refers to as “P.M.A.,” or positive mental attitude, which he says now feels “almost like a joke.”
“Like, ‘You talk all this P.M.A.? Well, see how you deal with this,’” he shared. “They took me outside for the first time the other day in a wheelchair, and I went through the lobby and I could see the sun shining through the glass, and I just started bawling. It felt like I was watching myself in this movie. I didn’t know this person. By the time I got to the corner, I got myself together and into a park, and just breathed in the air.”
Until now, Malin had not initially shared the severity of the incident with fans, cancelling upcoming shows with a statement that read, “due to serious back injury.”
“I didn’t want to get into the extremity of it,” he said. “And now it’s just time to let people know. Even though I really believe it’s a temporary state, I’m not going to walk out of here tomorrow with a leather jacket and a cane and go hang out at the bar. It’s going to take a lot of work and a lot of being in a wheelchair.”
He added, “There’s something liberating about the truth, that this is what’s happening to me right now.”