Chapter 5
Brother
Through these fun teenage years I was beginning to enjoy, and would soon enjoy even more, you may be wondering what happened to Terry. Terry was to be plagued with serious health problems from birth. I never knew if Terry’s adolescent years of health problems had anything to do with the problems he had at birth or not but since it was all cardiovascular in nature, it would seem there were some connections.
The first health threat to show up with Terry was about the time he was seven or eight. The doctor noticed one of Terry’s legs was shorter than the other leg and Terry was going to have to wear corrective shoes. What this meant was when Terry got a new pair of shoes; we had to go to a special shoe store in Birmingham where the shop owner would add one or two inches of sole to one of Terry’s shoes. The thickness of this sole on Terry’s shoe got bigger and bigger with each passing year and the few times that I ever picked his shoes up, I noticed they were far heavier than any I ever wore. I clearly remember thinking it would really make me tired if I had to haul that weight around on one of my legs all day.
If the shoe issue were not enough, it seems the veins and arteries in Terry’s chest were paper-thin. Terry was never diagnosed with any disease and at first these problems with his vascular system didn’t appear all that bad. What would happen is if Terry ever experienced any sort of strain to his chest, the blood vessels in his chest would rupture and Terry would bleed internally. The first few times my family ever had to experience any of this was when Terry would go to the bathroom and his stools would be black indicating blood in them. When that would happen, my mother would take Terry rather quickly to the doctor for them to do something about it.
Terry was hospitalized many times due to internal bleeding and he had numerous surgeries as this problem progressed through his adolescence. The doctor told my mother as the condition worsened, Terry would begin to vomit blood as he bled internally and my mother would have around thirty minutes to get Terry to the hospital before he bled to death. Considering we were exactly a half hour from Birmingham, this did not leave mother much time to play around when these episodes would occur.
I have always clearly remembered the very first time Terry got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and vomited blood. We were both still quite young and neither of us understood much about any of this other than what we overheard when the adults discussed Terry’s illness. The family was clearly concerned if Terry would survive these episodes.
Very late one hot summer night in 1965 Terry went to the bathroom and after entering, started vomiting profusely spraying rich red blood all over the bathroom. It was not just on the floor or around the toilet. Blood was coming out Terry’s mouth and nose in streams and it was splattering on walls as well as the floor, tub, toilet and sink. This was not like the other times when the blood had turned black before being expelled from Terry’s body. This time it was like a fresh cut where the blood is thick and bright red. I don’t know who screamed or exactly what all happened next but I quickly realized that my mother had gotten up, realized what was happening and without anyone getting dressed or anything, mother had Terry in the car and was rushing toward Birmingham. Now I did have a job to do through these events. As soon as this happened, I was to immediately call my grandmother and grandfather in the big farmhouse so that they could meet my mother and all ride together trying to get my brother to the hospital before he died.
I do not remember how many times this happened as we grew up but it was quite often and numbered in the twenties or thirties. Terry would always wind up in the hospital for many days and usually had surgery to stop the bleeding. I have no idea how many blood transfusions Terry had in his life but I do clearly remember one time Terry went to the hospital, they gave him thirty two pints of blood before they could get him to stop bleeding. This blood of course came from the Red Cross and being a poor farm family we certainly could not afford to buy it. When all of this was over, some weeks later everyone in my community would go to the Red Cross and donate blood back to the Red Cross to replace what my brother had been given.
I also do not remember how many times Terry had to have surgery. I know his chest was criss-crossed with long thick scars as the doctors had gone into his chest and repaired blood vessels. I remember the adults calling them “shunts” as the doctors re-routed the blood vessels in my brother’s chest.
Terry also had to have surgeries on his knees. The problem Terry had with a shorter leg was getting corrected in his teenage years as the doctors “stapled” his knee together on his long leg to stop it from growing as the other leg caught up. In Terry’s adulthood he stood at six feet and two inches. Had Terry not have had to have the growth to his legs stopped as a teenager, he would have been around six foot five or six. When Terry and I were young children, we of course had the boxing matches and various other fights as brothers will do. However with Terry’s health issues, and especially his towering frame, our fighting terminated somewhere along the way. I would really like to think I felt sorry for my brother with his health problems and decided to never hit him again. However, since Terry grew about six inches taller than me and was fifty to eighty pounds heavier than me not to mention for some reason strong as an ox, somewhere along the way I decided not to ever pick on Terry any more. I’m proud to report we never had any sort of physical violence again.
If these health problems were not enough for any one human being, something was also wrong with Terry’s skin. What I heard the adults to say was that the pigment in Terry’s skin was gone. Terry had white splotches all over his body. Terry never talked to me about it but he must have been self conscious about his skin, as I know I certainly would have been. Mother got Terry some medicine to take and Terry had to sit in the sun to try and tan the lighter spots. I don’t know if he and my mother did it right or not but the splotchy skin never got any better.
Needless to say, with all these issues going on in my brothers life, the entire family was always focused on Terry and never paid any attention to me or even saw me for that matter. Terry was never made to do any work on the farm which was exactly the opposite of how my life was. It seemed I had more chores to do than any one ever had and I worked every day. Usually without any recognition whatsoever since the whole family would be focused on what ever next was happening with Terry.
When my mother and Terry left the house in the middle of the night after blood had been sprayed everywhere, I was always left home to clean up the blood and other mess that had been made. I don’t ever recall questioning any of this. I suppose I just grew up with these duties as normal like my other chores. I never questioned any of these events, either in my mind or out loud to anyone.
As the years passed and I began entering my more rebellious teenage years, as these “sick” episodes occurred, I began to make the most of this time when alcohol was a part of my life. Suddenly I would find myself for several days home alone and I would always have notice of when mother and Terry would come home. I grew accustomed to having some number of days uninterrupted while Terry was sick and it didn’t take long to incorporate alcohol into my very on bedroom and actually drink in the house during this time. I remember the excitement of this as I actually thought I was accomplishing something and getting away with something. The importance of this irrational feeling can only be explained by saying alcohol was mothers only forbidden act! Tee Baker had her on Ten Commandments and they began with “Tony shall not drink”.
