There’s being dedicated to your craft… then there’s this guy.
A UK newspaper says Alex headen, the drummer of a British Korn tribute band named “Korn Again” suffered a stroke while performing with his bandmates at a festival last month. They were halfway through the fourth song of their set, when he began to feel a pain in his shoulder. Within seconds, the left side of his body went numb and he went blind in his left eye, forcing him to stop playing the cymbals.
Incredibly, the 28-year-old finished the track with his right hand only, before collapsing and being rushed to the hospital.
“I didn’t want to stop the song because it was so early in the set. I didn’t want to let the band or crowd down,” he said. “Never in a million years did I think I was having a stroke. I just thought I had low blood sugar or was dehydrated…I started the show fine but by the fourth song my vision started to go blurry, then my left arm went numb and I dropped my drum stick. I carried on playing with just my right arm but then I completely lost my vision in my left eye. The song finished and I collapsed on my drum kit.”
Alex spent a week in the hospital’s stroke unit undergoing various tests to determine how the stroke had occurred.
“They still don’t know the cause so I’m a little anxious about that,” he said. “I can’t really remember much from the first or second days in hospital other than being very scared.
Thankfully, his walking has improved over the last few weeks, though he’s still having issues with his left side.
“I’m very lucky that medics where close and helped me out. The NHS [National Health Service, a publicly funded national healthcare system in the U.K.) is a national treasure.”
Over the weekend, Korn guitarist Brian “Head” Welch saw the story and posted the following on Instagram.
At about the 1:30 mark in the video, you can see Alex begin to struggle some with his drumming, then at around 2:30, you can see band members grow concerned, looking back at him multiple times. And then, in the final two seconds, you can see Alex finally just drop his head and collapse on his kit.
