Lost and Found

Where Pooh talks about love, loss, hope....and family

I have been away a while. Not because I had nothing to say, but because there has too much going on and no time to sort it all out much less write about it.

My older brother Rick had a brain aneurysm. He has been in a coma and has been fighting for his life the last week. On three separate occasions he coded and we were told not to expect him to make it through the day. He has a wife and four little boys.

My family's world has been submerged in a week of tears, grief, fear, no sleep, and a mind numbing waiting punctuated by frightful medical updates that never seem to offer much hope. We have spoken to Brain Surgeons, Pulmonologist's, Internal Medicine Docs, Stroke Specialists, Phlebotomist's, Neurologist's...you name it. It seems that when it comes to brain injuries, the whole body can become involved pretty quick....and not in a good way.

Mostly what they said was,"His condition is grave and we are unclear as to everything that is going on, except to say this; Probably since birth, he has had a congenital defect in a vein in his brain and it has ruptured. This has caused his body to shut down and we are trying everything we know to keep him alive to allow his body and brain time to try to heal."

He had been unconscious the whole time.

So much for the lost part...Now for the found.
He woke up

Wed night, Thur morning at 1 AM when the nurse was changing an IV bag, he turned to her and asked.."Hey, what's going on?" She asked him if he knew who and where he was.... he answered, haltingly but correctly. She then told us later that she said to him "I'll be right back. I have to call about 40 doctors and your family"

.... A little over 24 hours later he is doing remarkably amazingly, astonishingly well.

The neuro ICU nurses rewrote his name on the chalkboard in his room from Rick to Rip (as in Van Winkle), as his wake-up and turnaround seems THAT dramatic. It does not seem humanly possible that this is the same gravely ill guy of 2 days ago.

We are all just shaking our heads. As of now he seems to be improving by the hour. He is talking, haltingly, and he is able to wiggle the fingers on a right hand that an hour earlier was completely paralyzed.

We know he is not out of the woods by any measure. And although he is looking at a ton of therapy and treatment, the most important thing is he is aware of who he is and he seems to be "him".

My family feels like we have won the lottery.

I am so exhausted... and so I am going to sleep.

I have so many things in my head to write about over the next few days and weeks, but I have two things I want to say before I finish this entry.

They are things I have been thinking about a lot these last few days.

The first thing is I have never loved my family more than I do right now this moment.

We are opinionated and independent people that often disagree and argue. We can and do drive each other crazy. But we never ever forget the most important thing, and that is that we are a family first.

As for the second thing?????
Call, or better yet, go see the people in your life that you love and TELL them you love them.

Don't put it off.

Think of all the things you would say to them if you knew they were going to be gone from you in ten minutes...forever...then say them.

Life is too tenuous to treat the people we love as though we will always have them around.

......we won't..............

In a second, they can be gone.

Posted by Jack at May 30, 2003 05:19 AM