When Life Kicks You In The Branballs

By Branballs (Brandon Fischer)

I guess you can be upset about a lot of things in life. For some people it’s the constant crap at work that eats away at them on a daily basis. You know, that glass ceiling that you can continually see through but just can never seem to shatter. Some people get bummed out about being single and watching everyone around them enjoy successful relationships. It can be tough watching people make out on the subway knowing all you can do is go home and fondle a pillow with Jessica Alba’s grill stapled to it. There’s even people out there that might be upset with the fact that the Redskins pissed away 2 high draft picks on Donovan McNabb just to ship him out of town one year later. Goddamn D.C. sports. I’ll tell ya though, all that stuff starts to seem pretty trivial when someone you really care about gets sick.
I had no idea that West Nile Virus still even existed. I always thought it was something that the media was using to freak us all out. Like, “Coming up on the 11 o’ clock news: OMG, people! Don’t go outside because you might get bitten by radioactive mosquitos! We have this and a special report about Frosted Mini Wheats sexually molesting a young boy at 11. Stay tuned .” Well guess what? My grandfather is living proof that they weren’t BS’ing. And I’m happy to report he’s LIVING proof, because it could’ve easily gone the other way. (not sure about whether or not cereal can actually molest people though. That’s another topic for another stupid article.)

In August, I got one of those phone calls that can make your heart drop straight down through your stomach, past your balls and into your shoes. You know, the kind of call that makes for one of those days that’s forever burned into your mind with a scorching hot branding iron. My mom isn’t usually one to bother me when I’m out with friends but the second I saw “Mom” on my cell phone display that summer night, I knew something was up.
She told me my grandfather was lying flat on the floor; confused and unable to even sit himself up. Suddenly, those “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” commercials that I used to laugh at weren’t so funny anymore. Nothing really prepares you for that kind of a scene: your grandfather, a man who has always been so invincible and alive to you, helplessly lying face up, waiting for someone to help him do something he would’ve been able to do by himself for so many years. We didn’t know it at the time but the West Nile was kicking in.
And so began a grueling, months-long trudge through a swamp of ICU visits, fights with rehabilitation hospitals, insurance problems and tears. After a while, it all becomes so damn hard that you just don’t have the energy or will to explain what’s happening to the people in your life who are interested. If I discovered one thing through all of this craziness though it’d be this: my mom is a bull. No, not the size of one, but she sure as hell has that fight in her. Sure, she’d have her breakdowns but she would stop at NOTHING to get her dad better. Believe me, I think every hospital employee in town knows her name.
As for me, I worried about him all the time and whether or not he’d get better. He had finally made it out of the ICU and into a rehabilitation hospital but that’s when the tough part really started. In the rehab hospital, my grandfather was this lifeless, expressionless shell of what he used to be. The idea of my grandfather being a zombie for the rest of his life because of a stupid mosquito really shell shocked me. But I also faced another challenge.
My whole life is based on humor. I‘m relatively lost when I don’t have something to laugh at. I mean, I find comedy in watching someone trip down a flight of steps and subsequently crack their head open.; that’s just me. I’m a pretty lucky dude for this to be the first time I’ve had to deal with a loved one being sick, but because I’m now a 24-year-old “man,” it was tough for me to figure out how to act while all of this is going on. Was it okay for me to laugh at anything while such a close relative was laid up in a hospital? Could I watch It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and South Park or listen to The Howard Stern Show at a time like this? Could I even attempt to make my family laugh? Was that allowed? It’s weird how your brain works while something serious is going on. I felt like if I enjoyed myself at any moment, I was somehow communicating to everyone that I didn’t care about him or something.
Soon enough, I guess I found out that laughing was one of the ONLY escapes for me. If I couldn’t find time to laugh at stupid s**t, I was miserable, which, in turn, made those around me miserable, and if those around me were miserable, I was miserable to the 2nd power (times 12). And I knew that my grandfather wouldn’t have wanted me to mope around like some 13-year-old goth kid with eye makeup and the propensity to take pictures of himself in a mirror to post on MySpace. He’d want me to act like I always did: like a complete idiot with a sense of humor.  Well…a grown up idiot with a sense of humor.
Once I discovered it was okay to act normally, things got a lot easier; and my grandfather’s condition was improving weekly. It was amazing; most senior citizens who contract this disease don’t have a snowball-inside-an-igloo’s chance in hell at surviving and my grandfather was kicking this disease’s monkey ass. This is after basically being in a coma for a month from the swelling to his brain that this serious type of West Nile can cause. He had to relearn everything: speaking, walking, eating…basically the fundamentals required to live.
And it all hit me on Christmas day; a day usually reserved for my grandparents coming over, opening presents and celebrating (yes, we’re Jews…so friggin what?). A couple months ago, I had come to terms with the fact that this year, our tradition might not continue, that this Christmas might be a little bit different. So you can imagine how great it was when I took a second to look around the room that day and see everything the way it always was. And my grandfather was BACK. A few months ago I thought I’d be saying goodbye and there I was, cracking dirty jokes and cursing up a storm with him. I didn’t have to use humor as an escape anymore: comedy was now a back-and-forth volley between my grandfather and I…like it had always been. Take THAT you son of a bitch mosquito.