In the first few hours at the emergency room we spoke with his doctors and oncologist at Dana Farber in Boston and the doctors and surgeons at Baystate. In a nutshell, because of the condition of his body, the size and location of tumors, and just the general trauma that surgery brings, they could not do a necessary operation on Brandon to solve the immediate problem. In this case, the chance of survival without immediate surgery on a healthy person is rare. For someone like Bran, with all the issues he was dealing with physically and the progression of his melanoma, recovery was pretty much impossible. Listening to the doctors explain this to us was one of the hardest things I ever had to go through. Staring death straight in the eyes is every bit as scary as it sounds. I myself immediately deal with fear by summoning anger.  I immediately hated the doctors and surgeons. They were giving up. Violence may be able to solve this problem! I literally wanted to dropkick the surgeon at one point. And boy, it would feel good. But of course, that would solve nothing.

My brother Bran though, he never broke. Never melted down. He was the one telling us to be strong the whole time.

He inadvertently taught us how to behave in a situation like this. It was incredible.

Speaking of incredible, the amount of love and support this kid received throughout this process was tremendous. I found myself in the very tough position of telling friends and family that they couldn’t go into the hospital room, there was just too many people. But they were persistent. They wouldn’t leave! They stood by in the halls and taking over the waiting room area telling stories about the guy they loved. They genuinely wanted to help. And not in some phony way. This was real brotherhood, and sisterhood for that matter. That brings me to another point. The brothers.