AKA my family is no longer allowed anywhere near bicycles after what we've gone through in the last 11 months.
In my previous post, I explained how both my bike and my car were stolen less than a year (less than a month for the car!) before I moved.
Well. That's not the most traumatic bike incident we ended up facing.
The timeline: October - My bike stolen. April - My care stolen. May - I move back to my home-area.
My brother's always dealt with mental health problems, but they were only exacerbated after he had a pretty psychologically damaging accident at work (also in October, I believe) and he developed PTSD. One of the ways he chose to try and deal with it was to buy a bike off Facebook Marketplace.
One particularly hard night, deciding that in the morning he was going to check himself in to a hospital to deal with it, he took his bike to the skatepark to ride around for a bit. We don't know all the details, but the story we've been able to piece together is that someone saw him fall off his bike, and they called him an ambulance. He was taken to an inner-city hospital, where they noticed he had some deficits indicating something serious, so they kept him to run some tests. Kept changing his story, falling asleep, trying to get out of bed, etc.
Six hours later, he jumps out of bed and runs into the glass door/wall, and has a seizure.
Their theory is that when he fell off his bike, he twisted his neck, and that separated his carotid artery lining from the walls, and they began to clot.
The only reason we knew where he was was because we all have one of those family tracking apps on our phones. Mostly so that when me and my brother have car trouble, my parents can find us easier, or they can see if we're on our way to something or not. My dad had been calling all day trying to get information, but they couldn't tell him anything until my brother gave consent, so we knew he was conscious and lucid for a time. My brother gave consent, but then his seizure happened.
They transferred him to a bigger hospital, where he stayed for exactly four weeks. He contracted pneumonia after like three days there, so they had him sedated. Luckily, between his transfer and his pneumonia, he was able to see his daughter one last time. We know he remembered her, knew her, because he grabbed her hand frantically. We were smart enough to have it on video, one of the last times he was conscious. They sedated him for the pneumonia, but he never really bounced back. Eventually, one of his lungs went necrotic, they couldn't wean him off the sedation without severe breathing difficulties, and he wasn't showing any signs of actually waking up.
For all intents and purposes, he was gone.
We made the difficult decision to let him go. What we hadn't realized was he was an organ donor. His heart and kidneys saved three lives. My niece and I got stuffed bears with a recording of his heartbeat. My parents got an organ donor quilt.
It took him one hour and forty-five minutes to die. If he'd hung on even fifteen minutes longer, his organs would've been unusable.
I told him to let go, to find the peace he craved for, and to be a hero, just five minutes before his heart stopped.
I miss him. A lot. When I drink Dr. Pepper, a soda I started drinking to emulate him. When I sit at my desk to play video games, an interest I started with him, on the PC that was his. I wish that my upcoming top surgery consult meant I could tell him I was planning on finally joining his next float trip. I want to know how annoying he probably would've been with the cheating CEO meme (which happened like. the DAY after he died.) I wish I'd joined more of his streams, most of which are archived on this PC.
I wish this wasn't the reason why I finally relate to Dedrick, experiencing an enduring pain that is likely to never fully heal. A weight that never weighs less, but you become strong enough to carry it.
It's also kind of weird, my parents and I's grief cycles are in-sync. I'll feel very off on a day, and my mom will text me, "is it a rough day for you, too?" The first time it happened was a random day. The next time, exactly one month after his funeral.
Also, thank GOD my parents watched the Matlock reboot (does it count as a reboot if it's just kinda playing off the idea? idk) BEFORE all of this happened. Because I watched it after and WHOOO BOY. It actually helped a lot (so did steven universe, which I finally fucking finished for the first time yesterday) with compartmentalizing and processing grief, but JESUS CHRIST.
Anyway, now for THE THIRD FUCKING BIKE INCIDENT
this is much shorter, which is why it's not getting its own post. Basically, my cousin was training on his bike for a tri-athalon. He became the victim of a hit-and-run. A car (not sure if it's the one who hit him or not, he kinda got amnesia) took him to the hospital. This was less than a month after my brother's funeral btw, and we found out a week after, probably because of The Trauma.
