I have no idea

This morning I woke up to my husband slamming on the hood of his car. I had somehow slept through our kids getting ready for school. I had somehow slept 10 hours. He was slamming on the hood of his car to see if he could get what he suspects is a loose lightbulb to start working. I don't know if it worked, although he did come in and kiss me goodbye before going outside to slam on his hood again before driving off.

Then my mother called. We haven't spoken in several days because she was on a trip and she wanted to check in. She asked if I could discourage Karl from taking classes he won't succeed in. I told her that since subtlety is my strong suit.... we laughed.

"No," I said, "I can't do that. I have to let Karl fail."

I can't protect him from the world and reality. That would be more damaging to him than just letting him fail. Assuming he's going to fail is even more damaging. Because we know so little about brains and what is going on in his brain, we really have no idea what he'll fail or succeed at. Some people believe in miraculous recoveries. There is some evidence that marijuana can help brain cells regenerate. So maybe one day when I think he's going to fall and he thinks he's going to fly, he'll fly. While it hurts to fall over and over and over again, I think it would hurt more to give up... I have no idea.

I don't ever have any idea what I'm doing or talking about. I'm just trying really really hard. I've discovered that this is pretty common. It is so common that most people just assume everyone else does actually know what they're doing. So as long as I am doing something, that's good enough.

As soon as I hung up the phone with my mom, a California number called me. It was UCLA asking if I had time to answer some screening questions about Karl for their brain studies. Since I was still sitting in bed in my pajamas, I said yes.

We talked about blasts and mood changes, anger, paranoia, PTSD, how long he was in the service, whether or not he was involved in medical trials or had recently had surgery. He is the right age for the study they're doing. What they're doing is trying to detect CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy - a degenerative brain disorder caused by trauma previously only detectable on autopsy) with brain scans. She explained that if Karl gets accepted, they will pay for two nights in a hotel while he spends two days being evaluated and scanned. They are going to have a meeting within the next few days to pick veterans for the study.

I hope Karl gets picked.... and I don't. I'd like to know what we're up against, but I don't really want to be told that his brain is going to keep degenerating until he goes insane and there's nothing anyone can do to help. Hopefully that isn't the case and he doesn't have CTE but then what is going on in his brain???? I want answers but I don't want bad news. I want confirmation of what we know, but I don't want to be right.