As a father, I worry about my children in exactly the same way, the problem is that the extent of my worries are different. It hurts me equally when Philip gets his knee scraped off and when Mark is diagnosed with a new life-threatening infection. They are both twins, born one after the other, but Mark has been a sickly boy since day one. He has a very weak immune system, all kinds of infections cling to him. All four years that he lives, he spends in the hospital, on perpetual treatment.
Not long ago, a bone marrow transplant was decided upon to improve Mark’s precarious health, and the doctors insisted that there could be no better donor than a brother or sister. Such transplants take better root and the effect would definitely be there.
Philip is only four, he can’t make his own decisions, it falls on the shoulders of me and my wife, but we talk to him about his brother’s health, we are interested in his opinion. And he’s always in favor of suffering pain for the sake of an exact copy of himself. He loves Mark very much, and he’s worried too, that’s why he decided to go through with the painful procedures.
I feel very sorry for my children because of that. One was unlucky to be born sick, and the other so healthy that he had to be asked to be a donor for his brother. I feel that by fighting for Mark, we are taking Philippe’s childhood away, but we can’t do otherwise, because both children are important to us and we can’t lose either one of them.
