Feeling Helpless

This morning I received a frantic call from my sister-in-law. She was following the ambulance containing my brother. Apparently, while working on the computer this AM, he suffered some severe pressure in his head/sinus area, became profoundly dizzy, became weak and white as a sheet, nauseated, vomited, and had disequilibrium.

Yesterday, while working in the yard, he had some left arm pain, but it went away. My brother is not a person who tends to panic, but when he told his wife to call 911, it justifiably frightened her. And, it terribly frightens me.

As a write this, I am feeling helpless and my brother is lying on a gurney 3000 miles away. I am trying to stay busy waiting for a phone call to update me on his condition. The differential diagnoses are running madly through my brain.

Did he have a sudden cardiac event? A gastrointestinal or intracranial bleed? Or, another one of those mysterious vertigo events that are addressed weekly on the WebMD Ear Disorders Board? As a matter of fact, about five years ago, I, too, had a sudden vertigo event which left me with daily tinnitus. I did have problems with equilibrium for a while, but did not have the same symptoms that my brother is experiencing today.

Several years ago, my wife and I returned a day early from a camping trip (too cold!). Our house-sitting son told me to call my friend, John. Apparently his son was ill. I took a shower and unpacked the car and then gave him a call. It was not his son that was ill, but rather John himself.

When I called, he was heading for the bedroom to go to sleep. He told me that he was so profoundly weak, that he could barely stand without passing out. He had called his own doctor who diagnosed him over the phone with the "flu", since he also had diarrhea. Without missing a beat, I told him to hold on to something and stand up now.

As he stood, I heard him rapidly breathing, and then collapse back on the couch. "Put your wife on the phone", I asked. "Call 911...right now. No questions. John is having orthostatic symptoms (his blood pressure was bottoming out when he stands). I suspect he is having a gastrointestinal bleed." I knew he popped ibuprofen like it was candy due to chronic leg and back pain.

I am not always right, but I was correct in this case. His hemoglobin was so profoundly low that he was close to having a cardiac arrest. Emergency surgery found and sealed the eroded artery that was pumping away in his damaged stomach. Today he is just fine. Some years after this scary event, he did have an unrelated quadruple coronary bypass. Again, I felt helpless.

Now, back to my brother... He has been procrastinating about retirement for years, so he continues to work. He drives over 60,000 miles a year for his stressful job. He has invested wisely and has enough resources to retire. Everyone tells him to do it, and he keeps saying, "One more year".

The older we become, the older our friends and family members become as well. Although age alone will eventually take its toll on all of us, it is these sudden health events that shake our formerly-healthy world and drive us to make decisions. I love my brother dearly and hope that the events of today will come out favorably so someday we can be two, vertiginous, hard-of-hearing old men, sitting in our rocking chairs enjoying our retirement for years and years to come.

I know he will be just fine, but right now, I just feel helpless.

Related Topics: First Aid & Emergencies, Symptom Checker

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