My brother and I are four years apart. In fact my Mom brought him home on my fourth birthday. I told her to take him back because I already had a brother and I wanted a sister. So much for great starts!!! We didn't always get a long while growing up. It wasn't until he got into Junior High and then High School that we started clicking in a way that would ultimately lead to a real friendship. My brother loved sports. He played baseball and football. He was very good at both. For a boy so young, he really took to the physicality of football. He liked the discipline, the training that it took. He did a lot of weight training which remade his body from a skinny kid to a very muscular young man. He did all of this before he turned 17. I had always been a tomboy. I rode mini bikes, skated, water skied, skateboarded and was always competitive with the boys in the neighborhood. That is until I became a teenager and stopped being active. This led to rapid weight gain which I didn't understand. By the time I was a Junior in High School, I had gained 20 pounds and really didn't know how it had happened.
My brother broke his neck in a diving accident at a Lake near where we lived. He wasn't even 17. I had yet to turn 21. I was heading off to college and my brother was fighting for his life in a hospital in Santa Clara. I think I cried everyday at school. I know I gained 10 additional pounds that year. When my brother was getting ready to come home after being in the hospital for six months, the Shriners had a fund raiser for him. It was a fun run. I don't remember the distance but it was called Run For Brett. I did not participate because I was too out of shape and embarrassed to try and run. The money that was raised went to modifying my parent's house so they could enlarge the shower in their bathroom into a roll-in shower for my brother. The money also was used to make a raised platform from the sidewalk to the doorway so he could get in the house with his motorized wheelchair.
My brother's injury is at the C-4/C-5 level. C is for cervical, 4 and 5 are the vertebrae that are involved. This is what makes him a quadriplegic. His spinal cord was compromised between the 4th and 5th vertebra. He has complete nerve damage. He has partial use of his arms because he had a little bicep and tricep muscle movement come back. He worked very hard to get those back and be able to use his arms in his every day life. He has learned to feed himself, and he and his attendants are very ingenious in what they have done to modify everyday things for his use.
My brother graduated from High School with his class. He went to Junior College and from there enrolled at UC Berkeley. He graduated from Berkeley with BS in Business and went on to get an MBA from there also. He worked for IBM and for the State of California. If my brother can do all of that, well I can run a measly 26.2 miles. So little brother back in 1980 I couldn't run for you, but I can do it today. This is why Lori Runs for Brett.
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