Matthew Sweet has given an update on his condition following the debilitating stroke he suffered in Toronto while on tour. “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,” Matthew writes on his GoFundMe, thanking the many who have donated, raising over half a million dollars for his medical bills and rehabilitation. “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.”
While rehabilitation has been very tough and will continue to be, Sweet says he has hope thanks to all who have cared. “It’s hard to start here without saying how touched and humbled I am by the success of my GoFundMe page. My future would be gone without it. I stand a chance it is as simple as that,” he writes, adding later, “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. Not too many people I suppose can say that. But you have taught me what care is.”
In the lengthy update, he recounts the stroke and the days that followed: “I just didn’t realize how much I’d lost as I waited ten days to be given clearance from the doctors at Toronto Western Hospital, where I lay in the stroke unit waiting to be released. ‘Do you know where you are? What is the date? What is the year? What is your name? Where are you?’ These are the things I was asked every day…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.”
Since returning to the US, Matthew has been at the Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital in Omaha where he was recently discharged. “I will try to make music,” Mathew closes his update. “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. 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.”
You can read Matthew Sweet’s full update, and contribute to his GoFundMe, here.