You never really thought you would ever be in this position. Your best friend for as long as you can remember is sick, and there isn’t much you can do for them. I feel your pain. My brother has diagnosed with Lymphoma a couple of months ago, which is a type of blood cancer.

My brother came back from school sick. He had lost weight, and not even in a good way. He started wearing mediums, and no one in my family wears mediums. We’re an “extra-large” kind of family if you catch what I’m laying down for you. He also stopped eating like a normal teenage boy. That’s what really shook me. That kid loves food and sleeps more than anything else. He was pale and sick. We thought, maybe, it was allergies, and maybe he was depressed. He didn’t seem to be getting any better, no matter what we did to help.

It was either the second or third time he was in the hospital that they started to figure out what was going on. After some blood tests, they discovered that his white blood count was abnormally low. I remember the hospital admitted him. That’s when I knew something was wrong, because hospitals, especially Army hospitals, don’t admit people unless the situation is bad. Things started to change so quickly from there. From then on out, every weekend was going up to Oklahoma City to see him.

That’s the thing people don’t really tell you about cancer: it changes your life so abruptly. For my brother, it’s living in and out of the hospital, and losing his beloved beard. For my parents, it adjusting their work schedule and finances to make it work. For me, it’s taking care of everything else.

The hardest part for me is feeling completely useless as a big sister. See, older siblings grow up with the idea that your little sibling is yours to protect – at school, on the playground, even from girls who could possibly break his heart. My brother and I are no different. I am his big sister, and anyone who messed with him had to go through me first. He never knew that I punched the kid who stole his Yu-Gi-Yoh cards. Fighting cancer is different. I can’t punch cancer in its face. In fact, I can’t fight cancer for him at all. I can’t do the big sister thing and fix it.

Fighting cancer is the hardest thing I have ever seen my brother do, but with that said, I have never seen him more positive. He busts jokes about it all of the time. During radiation treatments, he will turn to his armpit (where his cancer is) and he will say “Are you ready to get dead Lean Cuisine?” That kid cracks me up every day.

This moment of your life is one where you have to be completely selfless. Your energy is going to be spent supporting your family, especially your sibling. With that said, feel every emotion and live every second of the day.