Until I was born my brother was an only child for six glorious years, six years he likes to tease me as being six of the best years of his life. In my family dark humor and teasing are finely tuned skills for coping and surviving, for making one another laugh in hard times and for showing love. Then I arrived and was not the puppy dog he was really hoping for but a tiny baby that specialized in screaming and makng disgusting messes that no dignified 6 year old boy wanted any part of. I invaded his territory, but he was willing to negotiate. However, before negotiations could be undertaken (afterall, I was still drooling as my primary mode of communication beyond screaming and the occasional smile), I turned his world upside down. Suddenly I was the focus of the attention of not just his parents but what have seemed like everyone in his world. In the middle of the night, as he slept through the alarms and sirens, his parents might disappear with his baby sister and he would wake up in the morning to find a family friend or grandparent there instead of his parents who tucked him in the night before. At school he may sit in the office waiting and waiting for someone to pick him up, not knowing that we were again at the hospital and arrangements for him were being made. His baby sister threw his negotiations out the window and took over the life of his entire family. Even once the apnea ended, everyone was still so protective of me, and there were still so many medical issues that required ongoing medical attention that I was usually the center of attention. It did not help that I was born with the true little girl diva personality and socialized best with adults where I could show off my precocious vocabulary, my established cuteness, and my humor. Instead of me growing up as HIS little sister, he grow up as MY big brother in our community and roles were reversed. When I had to undergo particularly unpleasant medical testing I would receive a reward, usually a book and a stuffed animal, while he received nothing. Fair yet so unfair. Because our mother was also chronically seriously ill, together we had to face the unknown many times. He became my protector, and my safe place during those scary times. When I know he was scared too he never showed it because he wanted to be strong for me. He viewed me as more fragile. He would get me to stop crying and start laughing by having us race to pack suitcases for whosever house we were staying at that time and then doing things like unpacking mine to try to win or tripping me. I always ended up laughing too hard to cry. He was allowed to tease me mercilessly but he would be the first to come to my defense the moment anyone else hurt my feelings or laid a finger on me. I am amazed that he matured without clearly resenting me for all of the extra attention I required, and for the added stress I placed upon our already stressed family. I am proud to say that my brother is now one of the best fathers I know, as well as an incredible paramedic. I can not speak for him as to what it was like being my brother, but I can say that I know it had to be difficult. I know that it had to be frustrating, and confusing, and scary, and lonely at times. I know that even now being my brother is not easy. It is not easy to watch someone you love and want to protect be at the mercy of a disease no one knows how to treat, it is not easy to be unable to do anything to make it better when your attitude in life is to fix things (as a paramedic he fixes things, he is able to help people, he makes a difference), and in my opinion when you share DNA with that person it is probably scary to wonder if any of that mis-spelling ended up in your DNA and is just waiting. I would not trade my brother for anything. He had to go through the same battlegrounds I traversed as a child, and as an adult, just from a different angle, and together we went through the ones for my mother, and I know he is always there for me and that he is proud of his little sister and would do anything for me. I just wish my illnesses and my upside down inside out life had not caused so many waves in his life. I wish I could have spared him the ripples.

When you throw a stone into a still pond, it does not just experience its own flight and crash landing into a body of water where it slowly travels through the body of water. The moment it breaks the surface of the body of water the entire pond is changed as ripples spread outward from the point of contact. In ways microscopic or visible, the pond will never be exactly the same again for having been touched by the stone and the ripples spread out further than it seems possible.
In many ways, based upon my experiences growing up, having a child with serious chronic illnesses is like throwing stones into a pond. Some of the effects are clearly visible, like ripples on the water, but others exist below the surface. Some are beautiful like the sunlight dancing on the gentle swaying water, and other are darker like silty mud rising from the bottom and swirling in the once clear water. One thing is clear though, and that is that the ripple effects extend farther than most people would imagine and in ways many would never even consider.
My family was the pond, and I was the one who seemed to constantly be attracting stones to our water. Beginning in infancy (see previous post about The Battlefield), I was medically complex and required a high level of care. For me, this was my normal because I had known no other life, but it caused ripples in the pond of my family. Across the years of my childhood and into my adulthood stones fell, and yet it was not until relatively recently that I truly became introspective and aware enough to begin to see how the ripples and paths of these stones impacted my entire family. I had believed that because it was just a part of my life that I accepted and did not concern myself too much with (until this latest illness that changed the rules of the game), they were the same way. A little egocentric thinking there, which is unusual for me.
I want to spend a few posts over the next week or two looking at the impact, positive and negative, the challenges and rewards that living with and raising and being a part of a family with a child who had (and an adult who has) significant medical needs brought/brings to my family. We are only one family, but we are one family that has been on a long journey!