My Brother's Miracle

My brother is a truck driver. He delivers the big 18 wheelers all across the country and Canada. Sometimes he even has another 18 wheeler piggybacked on the one he is driving.

My father was dying of cancer, so when my brother got home from his latest run, he stopped at the grocery store to pick up items for our parents. He called our mother from his cellphone, shopped and started the drive to their house.

Now once you get off the highway, the next 25 minutes is 2 lanes, one lane going each direction. There is no shoulder on the majority of the road, only deep ditches on each side. There wasn't a lot of traffic at that time, since the road mostly connected two communities with less than 1000 inhabitants combined.

As he drove into our parents driveway, he got really dizzy and nauseated.  He sat there for a while. He's generally a big talker, so Mother thought he was waiting to get off a phone call to come inside. He finally was able to hit the redial button and croak out a "help" to her. When she came out, he'd starting vomiting. She brought out a large plastic bowl which he filled while she called 911.

My parents lived outside the tiny community in our county. There house is also about 100 yards from the county line. When a visiting nurse wanted my father taken to the hospital, they had a long runaround. The city had no service, it was directed to the city's county and not my parents' county of residence. They were directed to the county seat who contacted the nearest community with an ambulance service. That first call took about an hour to make and 15 minutes for the ambulance to find the house.  On this second need, my mother knew who to call and the ambulance was at her house in less than 15 min.

Once in the hospital my brother was diagnosed with a stroke. He could have had the stroke while driving the 18 wheeler far from home. He'd probably have injured others as well as himself. He could have had it at the airport or on the plane. He could have stroked out while driving those 2 lane country roads and ended up in the ditch, losing precious time until someone else drove by and stopped to help. He could even have had it while home alone since his wife was away visiting. Instead he had a stroke in the driveway of someone prepared to call for help.

Whenever people talk of miracles, I think of my brother's lucky stroke.