Last month, New York rock artist Jesse Malin sustained a rare and sudden spinal stroke that has left him paralyzed from the waist down. Rolling Stone was the first to report the news via an interview with the artist.
On Thursday, May 4, Malin was sitting with friends at an East Village restaurant when a burning pain flared up in his lower back and spread down his legs into his heels, Malin told Rolling Stone. It was a spinal cord infarction: a stroke of the arteries surrounding or inside the spinal cord. The musician collapsed on the floor, was unable to get up, and was hospitalized.
“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,” Malin explained.
The night of the stroke, Malin’s friend – Murphy’s Law singer Jimmy G – carried Malin into a nearby apartment lobby. An ambulance arrived and transported the musician to Mount Sinai hospital. Malin spent two weeks at Mount Sinai, where he underwent multiple spinal procedures, before he was transferred to the NYU Langone Orthopedic Center. Doctors are unsure of his ability to overcome the paralysis.
"This is the hardest six weeks that I’ve ever had,” he said. “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.”
Despite the severity of Malin's situation, there is good news. Malin’s rehab consists of three rounds of physical therapy each day. He said that his doctors have a short-term goal of teaching him how to move his body without the use of his legs and to do daily tasks. He’ll be discharged later this month and will be in a wheelchair while he continues to recover. There's no word yet if he will continue his planned tour of the United States and the United Kingdom. (Malin was going to be touring for the 20th anniversary of his debut album, The Fine Art of Self Destruction.)
Additionally, Malin’s manager, David Bason, along with a number of the artist’s friends, have launched a donation campaign to help cover the musician’s medical expenses. You can donate to Jesse here.
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Article Image: Jesse Malin singing live in 2005. (Stephen Edwards [CC BY-SA 2.0] via Wikimedia Commons.)
