Oh Darling Ones,

Today’s one of those bad stroke days. My tremor is horrendous and the right side of my face feels weirder than usual. It’s got the tingly, novocaine wearing off feeling. Maybe it’s more accurate to say it feels like the right side of my face fell asleep and now I got that tingly, pins & needles feeling like it’s waking up. It sucks and when this happened in February, I ran to the ER.

I’m not running to the ER because I know I haven’t had another stroke. I know it’s just my damaged brain acting out because I’ve been thinking about strokes and their repercussions all damn week.

When my phone blew up Tuesday evening I knew there was some bad going down. Nobody had died, but the news broke that Matthew Sweet had suffered a stroke. My friends and family knowing my history of both stokes and Matthew Sweet appreciation rushed to tell me the news.

Fuck.

Since the news broke I’ve developed a dislike for the word “debilitating.” What the fuck does that even mean? According to Merriam-Webster, it means “causing serious impairment of strength or ability to function.” Unhelpful.

Using that definition my stroke was debilitating. For some reason I wanted to knew his exact condition, as though my 30-year love affair with his music coupled with my own medical history means I should be privy to inside information. As though any of this is my business.

And yet, I’ve been wondering was Matthew Sweet better or worse off than I was? How bad was his stroke?

I still have no idea. How bad is bad?

Based only on the amount of money they want to raise and the updates on the GoFundMe my guess is was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad stroke.

To put it in numbers I raised $25K (thank you!) to pay for my stroke. It was $21K for my two-day hospital stay. Thanks to Social Worker Sister #4 she got me on the good poor people insurance pretty quickly and for the most part I only pay for prescriptions and copays now ($1000+ so far this year).

Because I’ve been out of work since I used the extra to help me put off the need to drain my savings and as my savings dwindles I keep my fingers crossed they’ll let me get on the dole.

Today’s Matthew Sweet update shattered me. He has to be in the hospital until December! They have to renovate his house to make a bedroom on the main floor and make the bathroom ADA compliant. He’s starting speech therapy. And gene there’s this:

“Matthew’s goal is not to walk and talk – it [his chart] reads very clearly in black Sharpie, “my goal is to play guitar and sing and make art”. He is very determined and we all can put faith in that!”

Uffda!

Of course I compare it to my situation and thank all of my lucky stars. I got to go home after two days. I never needed speech therapy because that part of my brain was undamaged. I was writing four days after my stroke.

I was so lucky. I am so lucky. I continue to be immeasurably grateful for my good fortune. Even though I shout “MY LIFE IS CRAP” at least once a day over some minor annoyance (usually my fucking walker bumping into something or my Floopy Scoop spilling something) and I’m fortunate for this level of crapiness.

Sad and lucky and always yours,
Jodi

P.S. I’m not running to the ER because of today strokiness because my neurologist said sometimes stress can makes all the stroke things (I need a word for this) worse. And the Matthew Sweet news has stressed me out and really made me focus on my stroke.

O% Fun. For real.