In the end it was all too much.

So ……….my sister died yesterday.

She was only 46 years old. Married for 25 years. Two grown children.

Too young really.

Ironically, it wasn’t the Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma (stage 4) she was diagnosed with late last year that took her life. Nope. According to the scans she went through last week, there was no sign of cancer. She’d beaten that sucker. It was multiple organ failure.

You know when you’re about to undergo a tiny procedure and the doctor tell you all the things that could possibly go wrong but are a one in a million chance of occurring? My sister was that one in a million patient. If it was going to be an unusual reaction to a drug or treatment ……. she had it. The poor doctors and nurses at the Peter Mac have been left scratching their heads in bewilderment at what became an unending parade of unexpected and ultimately fatal complications.

Amber went into hospital nine weeks ago for what was supposed to be the final step in her cancer treatment. She never left.

It has been a long and terrible nine weeks for her husband and children. It has been a harrowing nine weeks for her parents, my mum and dad, who have been with her every day of this final journey. It has been a nightmarish nine weeks for my mum who spent weeks at the Peter Mac and the Royal Melbourne Hospitals last year as my dad faced, and survived, his own cancer battle only to be back there again watching her youngest child slowly fade away.

Like a cat with its nine lives, Amber had run out of lives. She suffered from severe Crohns disease that hospitalised her on a regular basis, was lucky to survive a brain aneurysm a few years ago, she had chronic migraines and she had to cope with seizures. I think that her body simply wasn’t strong enough to handle the horrors of chemotherapy on top of everything else.

And I think she’d had enough.

On Thursday afternoon her husband and my parents had to make the heartbreaking decision to discontinue treatment as Amber’s liver was failing, as were her kidneys. The only thing left was to keep her comfortable and wait. We’d run out of miracles.

Amber chose to leave us Sunday morning. Not Friday as that was her best friend’s birthday, and not today which is her daughter’s birthday. Her husband was with her as she took her final breath and the rest of us were there shortly thereafter to grieve and spend those last hours with her now that her struggle was over.

Amber pretty much missed the entire COVID-19 situation. I don’t think she was ever well enough in the last nine weeks to watch television, listen to the radio or read the newspaper. We told her about it as we sat with her on a visit, but it had no impact on her situation. She wasn’t going anywhere. It impacts her now as we decide how best to say farewell in the more formal sense of the word.

Goodbye sis. It’s a shame we never had a close sisterly bond. I can’t apologise for that, nor can I be filled with regret for it. We are/were two different people with two different paths to tread. But you are still my little sister and you’re not here anymore. And it hurts.