Elsje Neethling: When cancer becomes your companion

Described by her brother Ryk Neethling as the person who has had the biggest impact on his life due to the way she has tackled the adversities she’s had to deal with, he goes on to say that “I am the one who won an Olympic gold medal but she’s the real inspiration.”

 

At the tender age of 13, Elsje Neethling was diagnosed with brain cancer and told that she had 3 months to live. However, being a teenager at the time, the magnitude of the situation didn’t quite hit home. While her parents raced around to get her the best treatment available at the time, Elsje’s biggest worry was “Am I going to have hair for the Grey Ball?”

 

This blasé attitude turned out to be her saving grace, because although what seemed like silly vanities at the time is what kept her motivated to make a full recovery.

 

Over two decades, she had undergone 9 operations which included 6 spinal cord surgeries of 11 hours each; 3 brain operations of 12 hours each; and 3 radiation treatments which lasted over a period of 6 weeks each. Not to mention the months of emotional trauma of being told time and again to bid farewell to her loved ones because death was imminent.

 

But she did the impossible. She beat the odds and for 11 years after that Elsje was in remission and enjoyed a normal life. She went on to study journalism in Potch and worked as a journalist for Volksblad paper. But in 2007, two months before her wedding, cancer once again made itself present in Elsje’s life and took away more than it did the first time…

 

This morning she spoke to The Complimentary Breakfast’s Rian van Heerden about her ordeal with cancer, being a survivor and why she now lives her life by the following quote, "I believe in the sun, even though it doesn't always shine for me."