A TRUE CHAMPION

She’s spent the past 14 months in hospital, but Ryk Neethling’s sister Elsje refuses to let her health issues get her down

- PIETER VAN ZYL

HER hospital room is a riot of colour – a cluster of bright balloons flutters above her bed and there are bouquets of flowers everywhere. Even her hands are awash with colour, her nails painted green, yellow and purple with polka dots.

“A friend treated me to it as a birthday present,” Elsje Neethling says. “I turned 43 recently.”

Elsje, a journalist who’s also the sister of swimming champion Ryk Neethling, knows the importance of celebrating these special occasions more than most people.

From a young age cancer has cast a shadow over her life. She was only 12 when she was diagnosed with a rare brain tumour and told she might only have a month or two to live.

But Elsje defied the odds. After three brain surgeries and multiple rounds of radiotherapy, she was declared cancer- free five years after her diagnosis.

Yet the dreaded disease has returned, again and again, and in 2015 she was told it had spread to her spinal cord.

As a result of all the radiation she’s had to tackle the cancer in her spine, she lost the use of her legs and is now in a wheelchair.

It’s been tough, she says, and she’s spent the past 14 months moving from one hospital to the next.

But it’s not the cancer that’s the reason she’s now a patient at Spescare rehabilitation centre in Hermanus in the Overberg but rather a flesh-eating superbug she picked up in hospital.

The radiotherapy and the sepsis resulted in her losing a lot of weight and her skin became very fragile, she explains.

“It became too thin and my left hip bone stuck out. Every time I wear pants, the material rubs against the skin. A germ got in and then I got sepsis.”