My Father-in-Law Just Suffered a Massive Brain Hemorrhage. Life Can Be Cruel and Beautiful.
The story to stop you from wasting your life
Marriage is weird.
The day before, you have a mother and father. Right after your wedding, you have an entirely new family to get to know.
I got lucky. My father-in-law is such an interesting man. He’s a jigsaw puzzle to me because he doesn’t speak English. Still, I got to know him well on his recent trip to Australia.
The man loves to take photos. The images he takes of nature are some of the best I’ve ever seen. The length of his camera lens is longer than a full-sized Lambo exhaust. Some flex with cars. He flexes with lens size.
The fact that left me speechless
My wife never told me much about him. He has a job back home that earns him a normal salary.
He isn’t rich.
He wears the same pair of pants everywhere he goes. Instead of buying a phone holder for the car, he stuck together some plastic and attached it to the dashboard. Most things he does are pro. That phone holder looked like a 5-year-old made it, though.
One night a few weeks back, we were both sitting on the couch. I had Youtube blaring. I was scrolling the recommendations. A video of famous bridges built in the red flag, yellow star, Asian country came up.
I hit play. The commentator went through a list of amazing bridges. One of them was constructed between two mountains. It was nearly impossible to build. The equipment needed had to be built from scratch.
It was one of the greatest engineering feats ever achieved, apparently. Then a sentence slipped out of my father-in-law’s mouth.
“I did that.”
WTF. Though he doesn’t understand English he can pick up a few words. And my hand signals are bloody awesome (should have been a mime).
“I did that. And I did that one too. And that one.”
Out of the 12 bridges in the video that were engineering marvels, he was responsible for more than half of them. I had no clue my father-in-law was an engineering superman.
I asked my wife, “did you know this about your dad.”
She knew he built bridges but didn’t know he could qualify for a Guinness World Record. This is his 9-5 job. He loves it.
That day I fell in love with my father-in-law.
The more you learn the, sometimes, darker it gets
As I got to know him I learned about his many health challenges. Heart issues, Stomach issues … I won’t bore you. He looks healthy though.
As someone who stupidly thinks they are sometimes a doctor, I began to learn more about his condition. The only issue I could see was stress.
His job requires him to be switched on 24/7.
When the phone rings or a text comes through on a Sunday, he runs to the phone as if it’s a nuclear bomb about to explode that he must defuse. And when we went to a restaurant or traveled he’d take his laptop everywhere. He cuddled it like a newborn baby.
Something didn’t feel right.
I saw this side of him because it looked like my former self. I, too, used to carry laptops to restaurants and do computer stuff while out with friends.
My father-in-law is me a few years back.
I know how this story ends:
- You stop
- Your life flashes before you
So to try and help I’ve taught him two new words: stress and granddaughter.
On Sundays (before he went home) I’d repeat the word “relax” over and over. I taught him to put his feet up on the couch. I taught him to throw his phone in another room.
When he goes off track or his health isn’t too good I loudly say “granddaughter.”
Granddaughter is a trigger word.
It’s designed to snap him out of the overworking culture he’s lived in his entire life that built those damn impossible bridges.
In a few months his unborn granddaughter arrives. For some, it’s a joyous occasion. For me, I use it as a form of ransom to focus his attention on what matters. Call me Doctor Evil if you want.
The Saturday afternoon no man can ever forget
Last weekend I got my wife a new car because, oddly, secondhand cars in Australia cost significantly more. Nothing fancy in case you’re wondering.
She came home. Me: “Where’s the car? Let me see her.”
She didn’t respond. I kept asking like a puppy dog greeting its owner at the door. She gave me the look of death. I shut up and waited.
“Dad just suffered a massive brain hemorrhage.”
Time froze. My heart stopped.
He called an ambulance and was on the way to the hospital. It felt like a strong headache except he couldn’t think. His brain shut down. Our little family, with a daughter on the way, could hardly believe it.
My mother-in-law walked through the door. She could barely talk. He was supposed to go back home and be a good boy. That meant not overworking and taking care of himself.
Clearly he took up his version of the party lifestyle: work on his laptop until he drops to the floor from exhaustion.
The unhappy result
The hospital found a build-up of fluid in his brain.
To save his life they drilled a hole in his head to drain out the liquid. The surgeon said that blood and fluid pissed all over the operating theatre.
He didn’t regain consciousness right away.
When he did eventually wake, thank god, most parts of his body seemed to be okay. His memory and thinking haven’t recovered though. He has goldfish memory. He can’t remember small details. We hope this changes over the coming weeks, but have no idea if it will.
The thing about brain hemorrhages is there’s no guarantee.
It’s a dangerous middle where you’re stuck in-between living, becoming a vegetable, and dying. Thankfully it looks like he’ll progress to the first one.
That’s if no more brain hemorrhages occur.
What all this means for you
I know what you’re thinking: Cool story Timbo. What’s in it for me?
Here are the takeaways for you.
Overworking can kill you
This isn’t a joke. The brain needs to relax.
The body needs time to destress, especially if you’ve been building the world’s most impossible bridges all day. If your phone feels like a heroin addiction, then Houston, we gotta problem baby!
- Tell your boss no
- Set limits on your work hours
- Turn devices off when you can
Time is shorter than you think
One minute, alive and drinking a beer. The next minute, dead.
No matter how healthy you are or whether you got Pamela Anderson genetics, disease can find its way into your body. Even the healthiest people can die suddenly.
Just look at Olivia Newton-John.
She recovered from cancer 30 years ago. She and her husband ate a plant-based diet and learned about the natural wonders that can make the internal environment for cancer cells to grow near impossible.
Yet she still died suddenly.
Money, information, and good diet can’t protect you from the grim reaper. When he comes, the man comes. And he doesn’t knock twice (unless you’re Fidel Castro who escaped death 634 times).
There is beauty in life-ending health disasters
While this situation with my father-in-law is brutal and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy, it has a beautiful upside.
It now looks like (fingers crossed) my father-in-law will come to Australia to live permanently. The brain hemorrhage has brought us closer together instead of further apart.
If this event didn’t happen then he might have stayed where he is back home and worked himself into a slow (or fast) death.
This warning may have saved his life.
In a few weeks’ time, I hope he returns to Australia. There’s one thing about Australian culture: we’re chilled as f*ck.
We make taking-it-easy-mate seem like a career grander than becoming President of the United States.
If anyone knows how to relax to the max and take a chill pill … us Aussies do. And I’m going to teach him the ways of the force. I’m going to brainwash him with everything this great bloody country has taught me.
One, to help him. Two, to selfishly give my daughter a grandpa that can stay alive long enough to see her grow up.
Final Thought
If any of what my father-in-law has gone through sounds familiar, stop it right now. Stop wasting your life away for some boss or corporation that doesn’t give a damn and will happily get notified of your death and not make an appearance at your funeral.
Life is better with less stress. Relax. Or come to Australia and let me show ya.
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