Extract 5: Reality Bites

After her battle with cancer, my sister Elsje had been in the clear since 1997, when she was 16. But on 4 May 2007 I had received a text message when I woke up. It was from my dad. ‘Bul, ons het slegte nuus gekry. Elsje het ’n gewas in haar rug.’ (Bull, we’ve had some bad news. Elsje has a tumour in her back.)
Elsje had complained about her back for a long time, and the doctors finally discovered a cancerous cauda equina tumour in her spine. It was fate of the worst kind: the chances of contracting two different kinds of cancerous tumours were two in a million.

I received the SMS at noon. I was in Arizona, 35 hours’ travelling time away, and I had just arrived in Tucson. I felt like I had been run over by a train. My mom also sent me an SMS. She can sometimes overreact, but when my dad says it’s bad, it’s bad. I don’t cry very often, but when I walked into the locker room and saw Roland, I just cracked. I then went out to the pool deck, where Frank was waiting. ‘Oh, I see you’re late,’ he said. Frank did not tolerate tardiness. I just looked at him and started crying again. He asked me what the matter was, and I told him that my sister was ill again. Frank was sympathetic and calmed me down. He understood, which meant the world to me. That moment underlined his best quality – the fact that he cares more about you than about how fast you swim.

I felt even more helpless this time than when it had first happened. I wanted to help. I was making a lot of money by then, but there was nothing I could do. Even if I flew back to South Africa, what I could do?

I called Elsje and assured her of my love. But I felt utterly helpless. My sister and I are so different. Elsje lives every day to the fullest; I plan ahead, like I did for the Olympics. I invest my money; she spends hers. Every day she wears her favourite clothes, because she doesn’t know how long she’s going to be around. When she got sick, it was a big shock, and my family has twice endured the trauma.

This is why people don’t see an emphasis on material things when they visit our family home. My parents don’t care about possessions; they care about enjoying each day. All the hype around me might be nice, but they don’t get too involved. The experience has taught me to be humble and stay grounded.

When I met Nelson Mandela, it was his humility that stood out. If this great man, to whom many white South Africans probably owe their lives, could be so humble and down to earth, there was no reason why anyone should be full of himself or think he’s special.

Even the problem with my shoulder in late 2007 gave me perspective. I felt as if I had been sentenced to death when it was diagnosed as a serious injury. But then I realised it was just a shoulder and would hopefully heal. I could turn my bad luck around; it could even be a blessing in disguise. It would force me to get some rest, and also to focus on developing my leg strength.

My first cortisone injection had me almost climbing the wall with pain, but then I thought of Elsje and the pain she had to endure again and again. I had to pull things together. It wasn’t the end of the world.

And Elsje turned things around too. What happened to her was as close to a miracle as anything. The doctors opened her back up to see the tumour entwined around the nerve centre in her lower back; it was so embedded, it could not be removed.
The situation looked bleak. In the middle of all this, my parents suffered a smash-and-grab attack in Johannesburg during which my mom was punched in the face. But when Elsje’s back was opened up, the tentacles of the tumour simply let go and the doctors were able to remove it. The operation appeared to be a big success. Ahead of the Olympics, Elsje and I had talked often, a lot more than we had done in the past. I missed her and wanted her to know how important she was to me. On one occasion, she told me that she felt the tumour in her back had flared up again. It’s just a feeling she had, but so strong was her belief that she decided to go for a scan. And there it was: an aggressive tumour (papillary ependymoma), clear to the eye.

My dad called me with the news in June. It was the same old story. I was devastated and deflated. Although we had all been through it before and knew the consequences, my immediate thought was, ‘No, not again.’ I felt desperate for Elsje. She was newly married and happy. It was the last thing she needed. I was in Arizona, but I planned to come home. It would be a 35-hour journey, but I wanted to be there to support her. Elsje, however, insisted that I carry on with what I was doing. ‘I’ll get through this,’ she assured me. It was so thoughtful of her. She could have asked me to come, but she preferred to take the pressure off me.

My spirits had been high, but for about two weeks after receiving the news, Elsje’s state weighed heavily on my mind. It put a real damper on things; I couldn’t get to grips with the reality.

My parents later took the scans down to Mom’s cousin, Professor Jan Lotz (father of the murdered Inge), who is the head of radiology at Stellenbosch University. They wanted to know if radiation was necessary. He said it was.

But then the most extraordinary thing happened. Because the doctors had said her condition was life-threatening, Elsje’s back was opened up again at a clinic in Johannesburg. There was no sign of any tumour. Bizarre, but true. In my opinion, there were just two possible explanations: the doctors had misread the scans, or it was a miracle.

Medical experts believe in science, not miracles, so they dismissed any suggestion of such a likelihood. But they could offer no scientific explanation and still don’t know precisely what the scan revealed.
But opening Elsje up did reveal some malignant spots, ones that weren’t evident on the scans.

The news was bittersweet: no tumour, but a problem nonetheless. She went straight into radiation to treat the spots, an awful process that was painful and made her very ill.
We can never relax – Elsje’s health will always be on our minds. I love her dearly, even though we are very different people. She’s the animated drama queen; I’m the quiet, plain hard worker. I think she is a much stronger person than I am. As a family, we’ve all grown a lot stronger through her illness. Elsje is making a real go of things. She doesn’t let anyone tell her what to do. Although she has a lot of health issues and has lost some of her functions, she’s a real fighter.

Her experience has taught me about the fragility of life, of how the smallest moment can make the biggest change. You leave for training, come back … boom! Life is so fragile and can be taken away in an instant.