Brian May reflects on suffering stroke: “I had no idea what was going on”
Queen guitarist Brian May has reflected on suffering a minor stroke in 2024 which temporarily left him unable to play his instrument.
In September, May initially took to Instagram to share news of his health struggles. “I’m here to bring you first of all some news, I think. The good news is that I can play guitar after the events of the last few days,” he told fans in a video. The guitarist continued: “I say this because it was in some doubt because that little health hiccup happened about a week ago. What they called it was a ‘minor stroke’.”
According to the NHS, a minor stroke is also known as a transient ischaemic attack. They say that the symptoms may “resolve in a few minutes or hours, you’ll need treatment to help prevent another TIA or a full stroke happening in the future.”
Following the incident, May was placed under strict orders by medical staff which aided his recovery in recent months. Now, the guitarist has thankfully returned to making public appearances and is back doing what he does best.
However, at one point, May lived with the possibility of not playing his beloved guitar again. In a new interview with Guitarist (via NME), he admitted: “It went through my mind. When I suddenly couldn’t control this left arm, it was quite scary. I had no idea what was going on.”
May continued: “I phoned my doctor and she said, ‘Okay, I think you’re having a minor stroke. Dial 999, get in the ambulance and I’ll see you there.’ But even at the worst time, although I couldn’t control where the arm was, I could control my fingers. So I thought, ‘I’m probably not really in danger.’ I’m all right now. I’m just taking it slow.”
In December, May’s wife, actor Anita Dobson, provided a positive update on his recovery, saying that he’s “much better now”. She told The Mirror, “He’s stabilised now, which is brilliant. ‘I just hope we don’t have any more reoccurrences. He’s got the use of that arm, which was a bit of a challenge, back now.”
Dobson also revealed that May had been keeping himself occupied by playing the piano which she says he found “relaxing”.
“He didn’t actually try [to play an instrument] until after he’d recovered quite a bit”, Dobson explained. “And then he very slowly started to pick up an acoustic guitar and gradually just exercise the muscles. And it very quickly came back. He’s just retraining the messages from your brain to that arm that it’s actually okay to do what it used to do. It was scary.”
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