My brother recently rushed himself to the hospital. Just like most men, I knew that it had to really bad for him to go see anyone the medical profession. I received the call and rushed to emergency immediately. When I arrived, his blood pressure was 205 over 215. I didn’t even know that they went that high! He greeted me with the same smile that he has for my entire life. I am the younger sibling and you would never want to upset the younger kid. We spent the entire evening with the hospital staff trying profusely to bring his blood pressure down. After failing with all their attempts, he was admitted
I of course was starting feeling sorry for myself. Never mind the fact that it was he that was ill. What would happen to me if something were to happen to him? Who would be there for me? He had always been there for me. He always told me in every situation that everything will be alright. He was the reassuring older child.
To make a long story short, they ran all kinds of tests and found loads of problems. He had congestive heart failure and a kidney that needed to removed. My world was crumbling. For the next 3 weeks I was at his side every evening in the hospital. One evening when we were all alone the he looked at me and smiled and started to talk. He told me how lucky he was. Lucky! I thought. I wanted to scream and he felt lucky? He stated that if they had been able to lower his blood pressure in emergency that night, he would have been sent home thinking everything was ok. He would have never realized he had other problems that needed immediate attention. At that point I realized that these were actually his genuine feelings. He had had two surgeries. One removed a blood clot from his heart and one to remove a kidney. But he still felt like he was the luckiest man alive. He saw the glass half full as I saw it half empty.
All is well in both our worlds now. We have taken the experience and learned from it. There is truly good in every situation. You just have to look.