Caleb Rixon – The Budding Musical Theatre Performer Who Survived A Stroke

Caleb Rixon had just turned 24. He’d recently graduated from the Western Academy of Performing Arts, and had landed a role in the hit Broadway show Chicago. He had a partner who was also a musical theatre performer, and they were living in Sydney. 

But three days after his 24th birthday, and shortly before he was supposed to start rehearsals for Chicago, he was working out at the gym when he felt an explosion in the back of his head. “I’d thought that my eye had fallen out,” he told Star Observer.

One of the gym-goers was a nurse and called an ambulance. He had suffered from a “grade-five subarachnoid haemorrhage”. 

‘Every Faculty In My Body Shut Down’

“But slowly over [those] 25 minutes, every faculty in my body shut down, and my left side spasmed out of control; my speech became slurred, and eventually the lights went out just after the sirens went on,” Caleb said.

What Caleb has is an “extremely rare” congenital condition which in his case caused severe bleeding in the brain-stem and cerebellum. It affected his heart rate as well as his ability to breathe, swallow and see. 

“All I understood at that point was a cold. I never thought that reality was like the rest of your life is completely going to be different,” Caleb said.

His career as an onstage performer was over. “I remember being half-paralysed, coming out of a coma, and my agent [at my] bedside. I was looking through gauze at a twisted double image of her and listening to her say, ‘what do you want me to say?’ 

“She still amazingly as a manager…gave me that autonomy to sort of make the decision. ‘Do we decline the offer so that they can recast?’” he said. 

Managing A Chronic Injury

Caleb is now managing what he describes as a “chronic injury”.

He currently runs a social enterprise called Genyus Network which is a global community and story-sharing platform for all people touched by trauma. He’s also about to launch the first iteration testing of this platform which he’s been building for years.

“Stroke ain’t seen as sexy – I know that much…but I know so many stroke survivors who are living lives maybe slightly uniquely to you. But it’s totally not an old person’s thing…it’s just another way of life that we should learn to be curious about,” he said.

Check out genyusnetwork.com