A Holiday, just what the doctor ordered! Well actually couldn't have come at a worst time for me could it! I'd booked a cheeky week away to Egypt months and months ago, little did I know that life would be taking me on a journey with my baby brother at the same time. So it's time to start the treatment regime and guess who's jetting off to Egypt? I so didn't want to go but friends and my family and work colleagues and I include my little brother in this, harped on at me to go, "it's just for a week" "you definitely need to go, you need to relax and prepare yourself" "it will do you the world of good" they all said. Had the holiday been just for me I would have ignored their "advice" and cancelled straight away, but as it was a "family" holiday I felt a tremendous amount of guilt in cancelling, after all my immediate family were for once in my life already taking a massive back seat in this new journey I was on with my little brother. So off I go, leaving him in the capable hands of his two absolute best and oldest friends and my eldest angel child. I say capable hands as these three to whom I had handed over the reins of his care are the best three people you could ever wish to meet, they know him so well, they love him. I leave list after list after list. I spend hours typing up his medication schedule, his treatment schedule, his clinic appointments. A little bit about the holiday first...... this could only happen to me! Off we set, with promises to text, FaceTime, call etc. Board the plane and sit on the runway for an hour and a half with a "technical problem", cleared for take off and settle down for a five hour flight. One and a half hours in, the captain announces we now have a "more major technical fault" and we will be returning to the airport, but on arrival we have too much fuel to land safely so we spend another hour and a half flying in circles to burn it off. So after 4 and 1/2 hours on a plane I'm back where I started ! To be told that we couldn't be flown out that day and would be put up in a local hotel and fly the following day. Now by this time I'm utterly peed off ! Muttering to myself "I shouldn't have listened to them, I should never have gone, it's a bad omen" I spend the next hour or two face timing the little brother, who tells me "he's fine, don't worry, you just go and try and relax" So feeling a bit more settled off we trot again the following day, back to the airport, only an hour delay and we're off....... until we try to land in Egypt on,y to find that the airport has been closed due to a sand storm and we're running short on fuel! OMG..... I should never have come, this is a disaster! I am a disaster! My life is a disaster! To cut the story short, we land at another airport, wait for the storm to abate (a bit like my life eh?) refuel and we're off again. So after a week of disasters, some strong sunshine, all inclusive crappy food and drink, did I enjoy it ? Did I relax? Did I stop worrying? Did they all follow my instructions ? did they get him there on time ? (did I mention it's almost a 100 mile round trip to get him to the hospital 5 days a week!) Well I survived, I kind of enjoyed it, but my mind was never away from him, he filled my head day and night. The guilt I felt was ginormous, here I was melting on my sunbed, escaping his reality. What kind of a sister does that? Actually though shock, horror, he did survive my week away, they got him there on time every day. He followed my instructions for taking his medications, he coped, they coped, I coped (just about)
So we're one week into the treatment plan, he's doing ok, no physical sickness, just some nausea. Bank holiday today so no radiotherapy, tomorrow we crack on with the fight.
The strange thing is I think my week away did actually do some good in the end, I feel like I've come back to a more "normal" life, this no doubt will change as time goes on but for now, for this minute I'm clinging on to this "normal" feeling.
