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I just got off the phone with Hulkman…again.  That was call num­ber 4 within the last hour. I love my brother dearly, but there are days that I would like to ring his scrawny lit­tle neck.  We have this “thing” where as soon as Mum and Dad leave for errands, he calls me to chat. It helps him feel like he’s grown-up and doing his own thing. I’m really the only per­son he can call so he can get car­ried away at times. Some­times he’ll for­get which speed dial to push and ends up get­ting my home answer­ing machine over and over and over.  So I’ll come home to about 14 mes­sages say­ing either, “Jen, will you call me back?” or “AHHHHHH, MAAAANNNN!!!!! C’ MON, JENNY!!!!!”  I love those last ones.  Cracks me up all day long. Because of his ten­dency to over work the calls, I’ve told him 1 call a day.  But he’s a sneaky lit­tle devil.  He’ll feign sad­ness, excite­ment or anger to eek more calls in.

Today’s one of those days.

But I also find myself hav­ing a hard time get­ting too upset because 1) he’s almost 42 and that’s get­ting up there for peo­ple with Down Syn­drome.  One day I’ll be cry­ing that those phone calls will never be again.  And 2) I think about how he almost died when I was barely 12.

We had moved to India in Octo­ber of 1983.  It was a hard tran­si­tion, for me at least.  My broth­ers seemed to deal with all the strange sounds, smells and sights just fine.  I cried almost every night for the first month we were there.  It was dirty and loud.  There was con­stantly a smell whether it was pun­gent human/animal excre­ments or won­der­ful spices.  You were never alone…too many peo­ple for that lux­ury.  Even­tu­ally I made a cou­ple of friends in the neigh­bor­hood which helped the tran­si­tion.  By Decem­ber I was feel­ing more com­fort­able with my surroundings. 

I was look­ing for­ward to my birth­day com­ing up — Jan­u­ary 18th.  I was going to be a pre-teen! I just knew it was going to be won­der­ful!  Our land­lords (who lived below us) and our neigh­bors were going to make a big deal about it and that’s exactly what I wanted!  I had huge expec­ta­tions that unfor­tu­nately were not going to take place.

The night before my birth­day, Hulk­man went to pee and passed out.  There was blood in his urine and he had spots all over his body.  They took him to the newly built Apollo hos­pi­tal.  There were doc­tors there that were from all over the world. That was such a relief as most hos­pi­tals at the time were very 3rd world­ish.  The say­ing was “Bring your cats to keep away the rats”.  Hulk­man was admit­ted into the ICU ward due to com­pli­ca­tions with bleed­ing ulcers and dengue fever.

On the morn­ing of my birth­day we were taken to the hos­pi­tal to see him.  My other brother and I could only go in one at a time.  When it was my turn, as soon as I walked in, Hulk­man looked at me so weak and pale yet started singing: “Happy Birth­day to you. Happy Birth­day to you. Happy Birth­day, Jenny Pooh. Happy Birth­day to you.”  His voice was so raspy and strained from all the tubes they had put down his throat dur­ing the night.  As sick as he was all he wanted to do was show me that he remem­bered.  I was a wreck.

I don’t remem­ber how long he was kept in the hos­pi­tal.  Some­times it felt like days and other days it felt like weeks.  Dur­ing that time he was los­ing more blood than they could keep in him.  Some won­der­ful Bible School stu­dents heard the hos­pi­tal was run­ning out of his type of blood so they came in a group and gave blood to Hulk­man.  Unfor­tu­nately that still wasn’t enough, because then his intestines blew.  The doc­tors told my par­ents that Hulk­man had about 3 days left to live so we needed to say our good­byes. We were dev­as­tated. I remem­ber think­ing, “Why would God bring us to India just so we could lose Hulk­man?! What kind of God is that?”

Dur­ing all this time, we had thou­sands and thou­sands of peo­ple pray­ing for Hulk­man, but hear­ing this lat­est news, our land­lords decided to step it up.  With 2 days left, they came to the hos­pi­tal, anointed Hulkman’s head with oil, sang a song or two, and read a very touch­ing prayer.  Hon­estly, I didn’t think much of it.  But appar­ently God thought oth­er­wise.  By that after­noon the bleed­ing had stopped and Hulk­man was sit­ting up in bed ask­ing for mashed pota­toes.  He was hun­gry!!  The doc­tors were stunned.  Since he wasn’t bleed­ing any­more they decided to run a scope down to his stom­ach to see what had hap­pened.  What they found was even more stun­ning.  There wasn’t even scar tissue. 

I’ll never under­stand God’s ways, but one thing I have learned is to trust Him. His ways are might­ier than ours.