Looking the elephant in the eye.

So in the couple of months since I started this blog I've been conscious (albeit subconsciously, if that makes any sense) that there's one thing that's been in my thoughts every day since November, even earlier in fact, yet I've found it almost impossible to give it words. A big, fat, couch-dwelling elephant in the room, staring over my shoulder whenever I go to write something for this blog. I've been nervous that acknowledging him out loud might take my mind along a long, scary pathway lined with 'what-ifs' - things that I can't predict and am frustratingly powerless to change. No irony perhaps that it took me 3 months to write about Lucy and yet longer still to write about this.

This past Monday I took the day off and it was at around 3pm that me and the elephant finally came face-to-face - when I accompanied Vicky for one of her last radiation treatments at the BC Cancer Agency. While the building was perhaps not quite as sinister as I'd imagined - since anything that involves the word 'cancer' has an unavoidably ominous air - it's nonetheless the kind of building - with corridors, waiting rooms, changing rooms and 12" steel doors leading into sci-fi equipment rooms - that you hope you'll never have to visit. Not for yourself and certainly not with someone you love.

There I was, feeling so small and somewhat overwhelmed in this place of over-sized machinery and ground-breaking technology, while Vicky led the way, through the maze of corridors, reception desks and waiting rooms, with an air of it being as routine to her now as driving around town. She quickly changed into a hospital gown and a few moments later we entered the treatment room where she methodically climbed up onto the huge, tilted armchair/bed and 3 teenage-looking medics instantly set about lining up lights, buttons, red beams and projected white and blue gridlines across her boob and ribcage. As I watched, a wave of emotion pulled tight around my chest and throat. It was a pleasant relief to have the radiologists explain to me without hesitation all that they were doing and exactly what the process involves. With utmost precision they matched up illuminated gridlines with markers on Vicky's skin, compared a series of notes and settings, all while maintaining a gentle and compassionate dialogue with me about what was what and why. I was happy (and relieved) to see that she's been in such good hands.

In this bizarre, Star Trek-like set-up, Vicky lay patiently and perfectly in position while we left the room, closing the 12" thick door behind us. Outside the radiologists once again began the same precise checking, tweeking and double-checking of buttons and computer monitors while Vicky's radiation was administered through the massive machine that looked like it would swallow her whole. As I watched her on screen my heart swelled with love and intense admiration for her and all that she's had to handle this past while. Yup, there was the mighty fat elephant, as large as life - staring me right in the face and stealing my breath. I felt like all the air was being pressed out of my chest and within seconds I was reaching for a box of tissues on the desk and trying to ask questions through a quivering bottom lip and teary eyes.

Knowing your sister - your best loved friend and support in the whole world - is undergoing cancer treatment is one thing. Seeing her there on a black and white computer screen, almost engulfed by a high-tech, over-sized 50's-style salon hairdryer, while they fire radiation at her, and knowing that this has been her daily routine for the past several weeks, I felt acutely aware of how horribly powerless I've felt to protect her from all of this and just how much that feeling hurts. Have I said enough, done enough, shown enough understanding and support? (Dammit for all the insane overtime that's eaten up my life these past 6 months!) Does she know how much she means to me and how much I've always admired her?

A few more zaps and it was done. I took a few deep breaths and dried my eyes before we all wandered back into the room.

Vicky's treatments finished a couple of days ago and although she's flattened by the tiredness it all brings on, I'm looking forward to celebrating with her, because, quite simply, she's amazing and I'm so lucky - and extremely honoured - to be her sister.

And I'd also like to know why I didn't get to spin the bed or get any stickers and tatoos for going with her.