Accepting the things I cannot change

When your baby brother has a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm, the worst thing you can possibly do is look it up on Google. You would think that I would know this, being the queen of Using the Internet for Self-Destruction. You might recall that I spent close to a year in therapy on account of my tendency to, among other things, diagnose my ten-month-old with autism using online checklists. And yet here I sit at my computer, not four hours after returning from my hometown, reading statistics that clearly show: my brother shouldn't be alive.

Daniel came home from the hospital last night. By home, I mean my parents' house. It's going to be a long time before he can live on his own again. He's exhausted, doped up on pain pills and blood thinners and blood pressure meds, unable to sleep, unable to drive or lift more than five pounds for a month, using a walker to get to and from the bathroom. We're ecstatic -- ecstatic -- to have him home after only five days in the hospital. Only it's hard to find that ecstasy, hidden as it is by about fifty layers of gut-churning fear.

Bottom line is we have no idea what happened. No idea why, or how, or what it all means. He goes back in for tests at the end of the month.

I've never even been inside of an ICU before. Have you? How did you cope? It's such a miserable place, full of scared, crying people sitting around in huddles. The ICU waiting room had free coffee, and an internet terminal that no one even approached, and an information desk with a phone that would ring whenever nurses or physicians wanted to reach a family member of a patient. I hated that phone. Every time it rang my heart fell into my stomach and all I could think was "something's wrong something's wrong something's wrong."

Every once in awhile the emergency helicopter would approach the hospital for a landing. You could hear it coming for several minutes before it arrived, and a few children would always gather at a window to watch it come in. I didn't. The sound of it made me feel sick. That's how my brother arrived, I wanted to tell them. He was so scared, just like whoever's in that helicopter right now is so scared. It's not an airshow. It's somebody's family.

I have never been good at living in the moment. I'm trying. It was easier when I was back at my parents' house, sitting in the same room as my brother, where I could see him, whole and breathing and eating a sandwich. I could feel gratitude over his survival because hey: there he was. At home! Just like before! But now I'm five hours away again and I'm shaky, shaky like I was when I stayed up all Friday night just waiting for a phone call to update me on the first surgery (which didn't take), shaky like I was in the car Saturday morning waiting for a phone call to update me on the second surgery (which did). Shaky because I'm far away and for all I know, shit could be going down right this very moment. Shaky because what if his life is completely different from now on, what if he can't do any of the things he likes to do ever again, what if his life is short?

Earlier this afternoon I spoke with a friend on the phone, who encouraged me to take an Alcoholics Anonymous approach to my fear: if you can't take things day by day, try hour by hour. If that's too much for you, try minute by minute. So that's where I'm at. Right now, this minute, my brother is fine. This minute he's fine.