Towards the end of 2011 events conspired and I was tested for my mettle. A number of trials appeared at once at my door and I had to find the reserves to cope and carry on. Just as I thought it was all over, my brother was suddenly and dramatically hospitalised. He's diabetic. He'd been managing this illness through diet and exercise and we'd all thought he had a handle on it. Even he thought so. But it is inherently human to become complacent, I think. Just as things begin to go well in our lives, we pay them less attention. And so it was with him. He paid less attention to what he was consuming, though still keeping a careful eye on his weight and continuing to exercise well. The result, however, was that he was whisked off to the emergency department suffering from congestive heart failure.
A dramatic, worrisome and tiring three weeks followed as he was treated and prepped for a quadruple bypass. My mother was teetering on the brink of going out of her mind with concern - seeing your child (whatever the age) in hospital, near death, is never an easy thing. As she said when told of his predicament, it was supposed to be her in hospital with her children hovering around the bedside not the other way around. We trouped through those weeks, emotions running high, energy running low. Visits to hospital blurred into one another and I fell into bed exhausted most nights. Coping with the sudden mortality of my brother, negotiating my own life around taking my mother to and from the hospital every day because I was concerned she shouldn't be driving in her emotional state, all took its toll. Eventually the surgery was conducted and he came through it. Not well. His recovery was slow. Much slower than it should have been. He spent longer than anticipated in the ICU. And he didn't bounce back to reasonable health as predicted. Instead he declined. He lost more weight, looked more frail and began to feel more despondent as his own mortality and the-things-not-done in his life came into stark reality. And we all became intimately, if unwillingly, familiar with medical euphemisms and language.
Shortly before Christmas he was hospitalised again. Nobody knew why he wasn't recovering on schedule and to the enormous credit of the doctors at that public hospital, they were not satisfied with simply letting him go home and cope. A litany of tests, and they truly were testing of him, were run. He was anaemic and nobody could work out why. There didn't appear to be any firm source of bleeding and every procedure to account for his blood counts came up negative. In the meantime, he became more and more frail and less and less hopeful. His talk soon turned to the possibility of no recovery, of leaving his family, his wife and young sons, without him. His mind went to dark places and struggled to see any light or hope.
Then Life played its trump card. He was diagnosed with cancer. Not any run-of-the-mill, relatively-easy-to-treat cancer, but a variety that was aggressive, insidious and rarely seen in this country. Again the various doctors swung into a flurry of action and he was quickly put onto surgical lists, treated as best as possible for his anaemia and readied for the inevitable extirpation of the tumour. Remember this is not ancient history. This is not told from the perspective of temporal distance. This is recent, nascent and unfolding. The day before his surgery, he sounded more calm, less breathless and better than he had for months. He was comparatively upbeat and appeared to have made a crucial decision in his own wellness. And I do mean "wellness" not illness or health. He underwent his surgery two days ago. Shortly after surgery, he was awake, sitting up, chatting and finally looking like he should have two months ago. He appears to have turned a corner. The road ahead on this particular journey is both long and arduous. Recovery will be slow and pot-holed, but his new-found positive attitude will, I believe, help to smooth the way.
I feel like I finally have back the brother I lost through life, circumstance and finally terrible, testing illness. I'm hopeful that he'll seize this opportunity at life and do all that he wants. And I'm intensely grateful for the lessons it has taught me.
A dramatic, worrisome and tiring three weeks followed as he was treated and prepped for a quadruple bypass. My mother was teetering on the brink of going out of her mind with concern - seeing your child (whatever the age) in hospital, near death, is never an easy thing. As she said when told of his predicament, it was supposed to be her in hospital with her children hovering around the bedside not the other way around. We trouped through those weeks, emotions running high, energy running low. Visits to hospital blurred into one another and I fell into bed exhausted most nights. Coping with the sudden mortality of my brother, negotiating my own life around taking my mother to and from the hospital every day because I was concerned she shouldn't be driving in her emotional state, all took its toll. Eventually the surgery was conducted and he came through it. Not well. His recovery was slow. Much slower than it should have been. He spent longer than anticipated in the ICU. And he didn't bounce back to reasonable health as predicted. Instead he declined. He lost more weight, looked more frail and began to feel more despondent as his own mortality and the-things-not-done in his life came into stark reality. And we all became intimately, if unwillingly, familiar with medical euphemisms and language.
Shortly before Christmas he was hospitalised again. Nobody knew why he wasn't recovering on schedule and to the enormous credit of the doctors at that public hospital, they were not satisfied with simply letting him go home and cope. A litany of tests, and they truly were testing of him, were run. He was anaemic and nobody could work out why. There didn't appear to be any firm source of bleeding and every procedure to account for his blood counts came up negative. In the meantime, he became more and more frail and less and less hopeful. His talk soon turned to the possibility of no recovery, of leaving his family, his wife and young sons, without him. His mind went to dark places and struggled to see any light or hope.
Then Life played its trump card. He was diagnosed with cancer. Not any run-of-the-mill, relatively-easy-to-treat cancer, but a variety that was aggressive, insidious and rarely seen in this country. Again the various doctors swung into a flurry of action and he was quickly put onto surgical lists, treated as best as possible for his anaemia and readied for the inevitable extirpation of the tumour. Remember this is not ancient history. This is not told from the perspective of temporal distance. This is recent, nascent and unfolding. The day before his surgery, he sounded more calm, less breathless and better than he had for months. He was comparatively upbeat and appeared to have made a crucial decision in his own wellness. And I do mean "wellness" not illness or health. He underwent his surgery two days ago. Shortly after surgery, he was awake, sitting up, chatting and finally looking like he should have two months ago. He appears to have turned a corner. The road ahead on this particular journey is both long and arduous. Recovery will be slow and pot-holed, but his new-found positive attitude will, I believe, help to smooth the way.
I feel like I finally have back the brother I lost through life, circumstance and finally terrible, testing illness. I'm hopeful that he'll seize this opportunity at life and do all that he wants. And I'm intensely grateful for the lessons it has taught me.
