About a week later, Diamond was found unconscious in his apartment, He was taken to a local hospital in Minnesota, where he remained in a coma for three weeks.
“I was taking care of my mother, and that’s the only reason I got the shot in the first place,” Diamond said.
When Diamond awoke from the coma, he also found himself intubated, which impaired his singing voice.
With his kidneys barely functioning and his balance thrown off by all the medications he was prescribed, Diamond lay in the hospital for another three weeks until he was able to go into a nursing home.
While in the nursing home for six weeks, Diamond’s feeding tube burst open and he was rushed to an emergency room. “Blood was gushing out of my stomach,” he told Kennedy. It “almost killed me.”
A doctor in Minneapolis saved his life, but Diamond told Kennedy he’s been “in pain with these fingers ever since.” Diamond was fitted with prosthetic fingers, but while “they may look great,” he said, “they’re not working out for playing the guitar.”
Diamond’s singing voice has “bounced back a bit,” he said, but not all the way.
And it’s “all from, I believe, the Johnson & Johnson shot,” Diamond said.
Now, a year after he was injured, Diamond said he’s taking things day by day, and hopes to someday play guitar again.
More importantly, though, he wants to get the word out about what happened to him.