In his first in-depth interview on the matter, Hatebreed guitarist Wayne Lozinak has opened up about his recent surgery to remove a benign brain tumor, revealing that he suffered a mild stroke during the procedure which left him temporarily unable to speak or write.
Speaking on “The Mike James Rock Show“, Lozinak recounted the frightening health scare, which began with a strange episode at the U.K.’s Download Festival in June.
“My lip got numb, and I was, like, ‘That’s kind of weird.’ But then I couldn’t talk. It was almost like I was having a stroke,” he recalled. At the insistence of his girlfriend, he went to a doctor in France the next day. “I got the scan and they saw a big tumor… then they did the MRI and then they finally said it was benign. [There was] no cancer, which was good, but it was big… And they were, like, ‘It’s not an emergency, but get it done within the next three months.'”
The operation on August 4th was a success, but the immediate aftermath presented a terrifying new challenge as the tumor had been located in his speech center.
“I couldn’t even talk when they first took [the tumor] out,” Lozinak said. “I actually had a mild stroke when they took it out. So I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t write. It was almost like I just forgot how to speak. So I needed speech therapist, all this stuff.”
He described his return to playing guitar as “slow” at first, but said it was “one of the first things I did” after returning home from the hospital. Doctors told him he should be back to “normal things within four to eight weeks,” giving him the green light to return to the road with one simple warning.
“They were just, like, ‘Don’t headbang too crazy,'” he said. “That my one thing. I’m, like, ‘I’ll try not to.’ It’s hard, but, yeah, that was about it.”
Now back on tour with Hatebreed, Lozinak says he is feeling good and is grateful to be back on stage. “The brain had to relearn after the disruption,” he concluded. “But I’m pretty good now, so I’m happy.”
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