It's just NOT FAIR!

Sometimes all you can do is yell at the top of your lungs - THIS IS NOT FAIR! THIS SUCKS! P.E.R.I.O.D. Sometimes you need to scream and cry and stomp your feet and just be pissed off at life. Sometimes even though you know that there are good things, the bad just consumes you. Sometimes it's just effing hard to get through it all and understand just why things happen. And sometimes you need to do this to cope. And move forward.

It seems these thoughts abound for us lately. Between little Matthew who has been fighting a good and courageous battle against cancer for two and a half years. To Hannah's dad who passed so quickly of cancer this year. To my brother who just had four strokes. Three in one day and then a massive one a few days later. The cause eluded the doctors for a week until they found the narrowed artery leading to his brain that was causing it (at the third hospital he was transferred to). The neurologist told us yesterday that it is very rare that anyone has this and it is the cause of a stroke. As a matter of fact, he said Mark was 1 in 800,000. One in 800,000. WTF?!

He lived, so we are grateful. They finally found the source and feel confident that was it and the strokes will stop, so we are grateful. They put a stint in and he made it past the critical 24 hour mark following that surgery, so we are grateful. But he lost almost all his vision. He has none in his left eye and only a tiny bit in his right, mostly peripheral. The neurologist said this was as good as it would get, there was too much damage. He's only 38. He has not had an easy life to this point, with so many ups and downs and struggles. And now his entire life is altered forever. Everything will change, just as it had been starting to get better. It's just one thing after the other. Why? WHY?!!!

I understand the intellectual side of the good things and how, though altered and not what he dreamed, things can still be okay. I get it. But right now, it's emotional and I am sad, and mad, and pissed off, and my heart is broken for him.

I don't think he knows yet because although he was there when the doctor said it and seemed to react with silence and some tears, he didn't talk about it afterwards. He has the common stroke short term memory loss. So, many things that happen day to day he does not remember from one moment to the next. Like his stint surgery, or what was hooked to his arm, or that he ate, or why something kept inflating around his arm, or asking and telling us the same things over and over. But that will go away we are told. And when it does, when he gets this news, my heart is going to break all over again.

Because, sometimes, it's just NOT FAIR! P.E.R.I.O.D.