Matthew Sweet has given an update after suffering a stroke in October while in Toronto, forcing him to cancel his cross-country tour. His family and friends started a GoFundMe to help cover his medical costs as he does not have insurance and has lost income from being unable to tour. A note from Sweet was posted on the GoFundMe page over the weekend, where he shared a personal update on his harrowing experience, thanked all of his supporters, and said that he’s “lived through the day where I realized I may never play guitar again,” but that he plans to try and make music and art again.
He began by describing the frightening onset of his medical emergency: “I was colder than I’ve ever been and an icy sweat came from every pore. Then I heard a deafening white noise in both my ears growing, and growing and growing in volume, and my eyes started to scramble like eggs in a pan.”
Sweet said he asked for an ambulance and while being transported to the hospital, he was informed he was having a stroke, which didn’t initially register with him. “I did not know what was happening to me at the time as I didn’t really know what a stroke was and I was alone in Canada to take in the fact that I could only see double and that I was now numb on the left side of my body and face and arm and legs and feet,” he explained. Per the GoFundMe description, Sweet would have to be flown back to America since “healthcare is not free for Americans in Canada.”
Sweet wrote that he had to wait 10 days to be given clearance to be transported from his medical team in Toronto to continue his medical care in Omaha. “The only way they would let me travel back to the states was with a medical crew, on an airplane and straight into a rehabilitation hospital. The cost of all these things was already astronomical. What is mankind doing? To not make these things available as part of our culture everywhere,” he added.
During his time at Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital (he said he was discharged in early December), he discovered the importance of caring, something he acknowledged he never really understood prior. “As I learned to walk, bathe, strengthen my legs, learn what hard work really was, I cried many times at my terrible fate and yet I also was so thankful for the fate I had in life, because it was a wonderful fate, and I was so lucky and found everything I wanted again and again and again,” he wrote. “Not too many people I suppose can say that. But you have taught me what care is. Caring about others, caring about what can be done, caring about what happens. In a way, I never thought anything mattered but caring does matter and of that I now am very aware.”
“I’ve lived through the day where I realized I may never play guitar again, I’ve lived through the day where I realized I may never draw a straight line again or enjoy the pasttime that developed over just the last year of my life, painting with fountain pens and coloring with dip pens and ink,” he continued. “I understand now what it means to need to reinvent oneself, when the self you knew before is gone, you have no other choice, you either quit or you keep going and so I feel I must keep going, and I feel a great burden to do so with such incredible support that you, many of whom I do not know, have given me. I must just say thank you to you for giving me this help.”
Despite the dire circumstances, Sweet said that he also has hope.
“I will try to make music. I will try to. I will try to make art. I will try to express myself, because that is all I have ever known and all that has ever brought me joy, throughout a life filled with more sadness than anyone could know what to do with, than any of us know what to do with, and that’s life,” he concluded. “May you all today find a glimmer of hope and love and a future to strive toward the way you have helped me find it, every one of you.”
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