Queen guitarist Brian May reveals he suffered a stroke: 'It was a little scary'

Guitar legend Sir Brian May of Queen has updated fans after suffering a “little health hiccup” last week which he says left him temporarily unable to use his left arm.

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In a post on his website and social media accounts, the guitar icon revealed he recently suffered a minor stroke which caused a temporary loss of control of one of his arms. This “health hiccup,” as he calls it, was thankfully a minor one, as he is now recovering and regaining full function.

“The good news is that I can play guitar,” May said on Wednesday. “It was in some doubt because that little health hiccup that I mentioned happened about a week ago, and what they called it was a minor stroke and all of a sudden, out of the blue, I didn’t have any control over this arm, so it was a little scary.”

While he’s on the mend, he tells fans, “I really don’t want sympathy. Please don’t do that because it will clutter up my inbox and I hate that.” In the meantime May says he will be doing as he’s told, “which is basically nothing. I’m grounded I’m not allowed to go out – well I’m not allowed to drive, not allowed to get on a plane, not allowed to raise the heart rate too high… But I’m good.”

The Queen guitarist also took the opportunity to update his followers about his recent documentary, Brian May: The Badgers, the Farmers and Me , which aired on BBC Two on August 23, highlighting his decades-long campaign to end the U.K. farming industry's needless destruction of wildlife.

“We had some great reactions from farmers particularly," he says, “also from wildlife people of course, because we’re very much in that corner still but the documentary was really about the farmers, as people discovered to their surprise, I think, and it’s no surprise to me that we are not at odds at all with the farmers. We are at odds with the people who have been feeding them the wrong information.”