(#5291) Feeling helpless to help my brother

      I am living in a dilemma, how to do anything for John that will allow him to escape the trap he is in. His body is trying to shut down while his will to live is as strong as ever. He is fighting hard not to give in to what his body is doing to him. It is excruciating to experience for not only him but for me as well. I don't know what to do for him. All the medical professionals are telling me his blood flow to his brain is diminished and that soon he won't be able to use his mind at all. What that does to the rest of his body is still uncertain to me but it cannot be good for him to not have the proper blood flow to his brain.
     Yet that time is not yet and in the meantime John is fighting against it. I have not told him of the diagnosis that they have formed of his imminent demise. I won't do that to him because he is fighting so hard to shake off the effects the stroke has caused him. I won't take away his will to survive by telling him what the doctors think. So John is caught between believing he will overcome the stroke and return home to a somewhat normal life and the reality of the daily slipping of his ability to function. He is not able to care for himself now and is tended to daily with cleaning and eating help. It is tragic to me that John, a man who would not want this to be his ending, has to endure this. The look in his eyes yearning for me to tell him that he is going to be fine is almost too much to bear.
     But I do bear it and tell him that it is up to him to work as hard as he can to make himself more self reliant. Yet I feel disingenuous in leading him on against the most probable outcome. In some non logical way I hope he can reverse reality but the odds of that are non existent. Such is my dilemma. I am fighting against the inevitable and it hurts. I don't want John to feel that inevitability as he is fighting against what he doesn't know. John has always been a fighter so letting him fight to the last is my best answer to the question of what do I do. I will not tell John he is dying and for him to accept that. I will keep telling him to fight against what is happening to him and let that be his motivation until he can no longer fight.