Rag Doll : 01.16.03 @ 9:34 pm

I don' t know if I've talked about my brother before. I normally forget about it and then every once in awhile something will happen and I'll be reminded that my brother isn't normal. He is to me - I've grown up with him like this. My brother has mild Autism, which we've known about for almost as long as he's been around. He won't talk to you, if you came over to visit. He talks to us sometimes, as long as we don't ask him a direct question. He clams up when you ask him a direct question so I've learned not to. Besides mild Autism, Matt has Muscular Dystrophy. MD is a genetic disease where the muscles basicly deteriorate as he grows older. He uses a wheelchair outside of the house now and soon he'll have to use one inside as well, for he's falling down more often.
That's what reminded me. He fell down and just lay there like a rag doll, for he could barely move at all, yet alone have the strength to pick himself back up. I had to pick him up myself - all 160 odd pounds of him - and get him back into bed. Mum can't do it and Dad was asleep.
It's when he falls that I really notice it. Or the way he walks. He has to throw his entire body into his walk to go anywhere and he has some serious scolliosis (spelling, when the spine is curved) as a result of this disease. Sometimes I wish he'd just move into the wheelchair permamently. I'm used to the wheelchair by now, I don't even notice it. Him in the wheelchair would mean less daily reminders of his disease, as backwards as that sounds.
Less of a daily reminder of the fact that his body is betraying him by ticking away faster and faster... faster then it should.
Someday, I'll get a call... it'll be Mum from the hospital, sobbing that my brother is dead. And I'll fly home from college or graduate school, write a pretty little speech for his funeral, and watch as my baby brother is buried in the ground after 20 odd years of fighting a battle that was doomed from the first diagnosis.

Sorry for the relatively short entry. Must return to research and homework. The Starbucks down the road from me is hiring, so of course I'm jumping at the chance for a job. I need the expierence and most of all, the money. Let's hope I get the job.

/A
music: "Going Down" - Ani Difranco
mood: sad

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