Liz Hobday, AAP
Mackenzie Sinclair, 19, has been a Taylor Swift fan for as long as she can remember, but for the first time at the Eras tour she won’t be able to stand up and dance.
The former nursing student from Geelong has a rare neurological condition, and an episode in May 2023 saw her lose consciousness and end up in intensive care, unable to feel or move her legs.
“It’s going to be a massive change for me, my first concert in a wheelchair, not being able to dance around like everyone else,” she said.
Ms Sinclair scored a rare accessible-zone ticket to Swift’s first concert at the MCG in Melbourne during the more than six months she spent in hospital, and the hope of making it to the event motivated her to persevere with her rehabilitation.
She kept a list of goals on a whiteboard in her hospital room with the concert listed up top, along with the phrase “karma is a cat”.
“There have been some really dark times in my life that I really haven’t seen a way out of,” said Ms Sinclair.
“Her music has honestly got me through it, as clichéd as it sounds, she’s had such an impact on so many people.”
While Ms Sinclair said being in a wheelchair limited her outfit options for the concert, she intends to wear a pink glitter dress with puffed sleeves, ombre earrings (in a nod to the colour scheme of the Lover album) and paint a glitter heart around one eye.
Doctors still don’t know if she will regain the use of her legs, Ms Sinclair said, so the distraction of threading more than 100 friendship bracelets to share with fellow Swifties has been especially welcome of late.
“It’s gonna be a challenge to hand them out, but it’s also going to be a way to prove that I can do things,” she said.
