Sheffield Covid coma musician relearns guitar for comeback
A musician who spent more than two years relearning to sing and play the guitar after being in a coma is to perform a comeback gig with his band. 
Graham Rodgers nearly died after suffering a stroke and further complications following a Covid infection in March 2020.
62-year-old from Sheffield spent a month in a coma and finally woke when nurses played him his own music.
He said performing again with his band Calico Fever "meant everything".
Mr Rodgers collapsed at home after having the stroke, which was caused by increased blood coagulation and clotting.
While in hospital he suffered three further minor strokes, a heart attack, pneumonia, septicaemia, blood clots on his lungs and had to be revived three times.
Mr Rodgers, from Frecheville, said: "At one point I heard music in the distance and it got a bit louder, then I could hear some women talking and then I thought, 'they're my songs'.
"I opened my eyes and I remember a nurse saying, 'he's come back to us'."
He was discharged after three months and since then has had to relearn to walk, talk, read and write, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said. 
Discussing relearning the guitar, he said: "One day I picked it up and it was like going back to square one - I burst into tears because I thought I had lost music.
"But then I thought how lucky I am still to be here and how I owe it to all those people who didn't survive Covid to stick at it."
Mr Rodgers, who has invited the medical staff who cared for him to the gig at Greystones pub in Sheffield on Saturday night, said he "owed his life to the heroic efforts of NHS staff".
"Saying thank you doesn't seem enough, I have a life again now," he added. 
"It will mean everything to perform again, it is me."
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