Hospital Reflection 3


Thinking lately about what support is. How are people there for each other? When is reacting to something really overreacting? These are the things I think about when I sit here with my sister back in southern california and can see all of the relationships I am involved in. What does it mean to deal with yourself, when you are constantly dealing with the precarious health of someone else? People say that you have to take care  of yourself before you can take care of someone else, except it seem more complicated than that. 

I just cut a trip short from India to come here when I found out my sister had an aneurysm in her brain, two months after her emergency heart surgery which she was recovering from. Apparently a piece of rogue bacteria from her previous endocarditis worked its way to the brain through the bloodstream. Of course, one would think this would immediately cause a stroke or something like that–which it does much of the time. But luckily (luckily?) for her, this was a very small piece of bacteria, and it lodged itself in a small capillary in the brain, eating away at the capillary wall. Then it died. This caused the capillary to bleed, causing her to have a full on seizure at my parents house. Back in the hospital. And I’m halfway around the world, looking at burning bodies on the ganges river.

Here’s how I found out about this. I found myself at the burning ghats in varanasi with my girlfriend, I gave my family a phone call to say hello. My dad answered and the first thing he said was–after a slightly uncomfortable moment of silence– “your sister is ok”, at which point I wanted to vomit because I knew everything was not ok. Then he told me the story about the brain aneurysm and how they were waiting for the results of a test to see what the best option was. Call back tomorrow, he said. So I called back the next day, and she had just been operated on. The neurology department thought it would take a few days, but there happened to be a brain surgeon who was really good, so they went ahead and did it.

As soon as I found this out, we negotiated our way home from India, my girlfriend going to her parent’s house (she had been in India already for four months) and me going to see my family in southern california. When I got here (where I am now) it looked as if everything we had been through in the last 4 months–the endless emergency mindset, constantly watching and asking questions, the smallest pain or headache cause for great concern–was repeating itself. And it kind of is, although as the days go by, the cause for concern becomes lessened by flowing time.

But I wonder now, as I feel like almost everything I have done in my own life has in some way fallen apart, where do I stand? I feel like I have constantly been making the right decision, and I’m not talking about something subjective thing here, I’m talking about theright decision, the one where you have to make the right choice or you will suffer from your own shortcomings forever. I decided to take a chance and to try to save enough to get to India, and then all this stuff with my sister happens. I took off many days, weeks, of work to be there as much as I possibly could. After being reassured by doctors and most importantly my sister that it was alright to leave, I thought I was on my way. I barely made it there and back, when it was all said and done. I also made the right decision to leave when I found out about this new medical event in my family, cutting short a trip which was turning out to be a lot of fun.

And then I find myself here, and I wonder where I end and other people begin. Do we bleed into each other? Are we really connected?  What does supporting someone mean? In the world I was born into and live in, it means I put as many of the things I want that are not related to the person in need of support to the side, and I find out many times that things fall apart. Go there with people–an act of solidarity. Do you ever feel the pain of others so intensely you don’t feel like you have a choice except to be there for them? That’s how I feel.

But if you are in close relationship with others around you, it can put them in an unfair situation because they feel the magnet pull of your need for support as well. It’s like a big chain, and right now I question what my expectations are of others. What do I need, what do I want? How much of this is in my head and how much is real? Or doesn’t it matter? There has been instability amongst those closest to me for so long, that I do not know objectively what the correct way to act in a crisis is except that I throw myself into it–but I am not going to analyze myself here–that’s for other people to do if they care. If normal life has always been unstable, then where is the example that one turns to? It seems we all just keep each other afloat.