My Journey Starts Today

Over two weeks ago, while waiting for the results of my board exam to come out, I had an idea. As I was browsing through possible courses to take, I came across a non-formal certificate program given by UP on Caring for the Special Child. Right away I was enticed and decided to sign up for it, no second thoughts.

As a sister of two special children, Ryan who is 19 and Robert who is 10, I have been very well exposed to special children because apparently I am their elder sister and for the most part of their lives, I was there with them. So why take this course when I live with them and I know them all too well?

It's because, I don't really know them! Yes, their my brothers and I see them almost everyday, I know their condition, but even through all that, I don't really know them. I can rarely understand what they are trying to say. And for the most part I don't know how to handle them. I actually blame myself for not spending more time with them. I do regret not trying to even study their condition until such the time I started my Nursing course.

Don't get me wrong, I do love my brothers so much and I'm not ashamed of them. But when you're young you tend to have a lot of dreams and want to do a lot of things, taking care of my brothers was the least of my worries since my we had an old helper that took care of them. Being the only "normal" child in the family meant perks for me, going with my parents travelling, and to special occasions while my brothers are usually left at home because the old nanny thought they will only cause trouble. I didn't mind that at first, nor did my parents because they were also very busy with work and business.

Things started to change when I turned college. Our mother decided to work in the US to help my dad, who also worked abroad, take care of the expenses. Being the eldest in the family, I had to play mom and boss around the house, which was hard to do at 17. Because usually at that age is when you first get exposed to the outside world. I was so immature then, that I constantly spent time out of the house with my friends not, thinking that I wasn't paying any attention to my brothers anymore.

It was during Robert's first seizure attack that I finally got a wake up call. It was then that I saw how fragile they were. I realized that just because they looked healthy, that didn’t mean that everything was ok. There was still something that needed special care. That night at the hospital changed my whole life. It brought me to the reality that one day they will be in my care and one day our helpers would not be there to take care of then.

I cried a lot after that night because I had a hard time understanding. At first I have to admit that I the thoughts that came into my mind were very selfish. At that time I was 17, I was an Accountancy Freshman, and I had always pictured myself as lawyer or a journalist, I wanted to travel, and have fun, have my own family. I felt my dreams crash down on me then. It took a while for me to accept the fact that I had a life long responsibility on my shoulders.

What made me see reality and clear my mind was pure serendipity. A month after Robert’s attack, my grandfather died quite tragically. He was a quiet man and we never had a chance to talk heart to heart since I was too young then. On the day of his funeral, one of our family friends approached me, she told me, “You know what? A few days before your lolo died, he was talking about you. He said he was so worried about you taking the responsibility of taking care of your brothers. Your lolo said that he was proud of you because you took the responsibility without a complaining.” I felt so bad for all the selfish dreams that I thought had crashed on me. That day, I decided to change myself. The following semester, I finally gave into my mother’s wishes to take up nursing because I realized that being a nurse would mean that I would be able to understand my brothers better at the same time, I might be able to earn enough for me to support their needs.

Eversince then, my brothers have been my inspiration. I studied well and just recently I passed the Nursing Licensure Exam. But my tall tale does not end here, because eventhough I am already a nurse, equipped with medical knowledge, I found that I still could not get close to my brothers thoughts. Maybe because I have been away for so long that they would sometimes prefer to stay with their nanny. I felt so sad that after everything that I went through I still feel that I was not equipped to take care of them and time is running fast for me, soon Ryan will be an adult in numerical age and Robert will be an adolescent. Our helpers will not be around forever and my parents may become too old to take care of them.

That is why, after my oh soo long story, I decided, this is the right thing for me to do. Hopefully this course will give me a different perspective of how to take care of my children with special needs, most specifically my brothers.