Dealing With Being The Caregiver To My Older Sister

Backstory

When my sister Chelsea and I were younger we were inseparable, anything you could think of we did together and most likely more then once a day. We would wake up at 6 am for school and jump in the pool in our underwear, then go to school, come home and jump in the pool again.. needless to say our favourite thing to do was swim. Never real laps tho, just singing, dancing and gymnastics competitions (which Chelsea always won). Chelsea always had a problem walking but she never let it stop her. Then one night, Chelsea was 9 I was 6 it was a normal night in out household : Mum and Dad fighting, Zach (our brother) playing on the playstation and Chelsea and I just getting out of the pool into the shower. Chelsea fell that night in the shower, like her legs just gave up, and her head went straight to the floor. Afterwards, we were both in our room, in our beds watching a movie when everything just started happening. Her sleeping alarms go off telling us that she's not breathing.. Zach and I stood at the door of my bedroom watching my mum doing CPR on Chelsea. After that the details are very vague, the next thing i can remember was sitting on a chair in the PICU of NUH looking at my older sister having tubes everywhere doctors running in and out and then me not knowing what was happening. She had her stroke.

Felt like days later, could've been months but then all I knew to do was gone. Chelsea was paralysed from the neck down with a tracheostomy in her throat to help her breathe with a ventilator. The things I had done everyday for the past 6 years were gone, I couldn't swim, dance, laugh, sing with my best friend anymore, I didn't understand how this happened but thanks to all my mandatory school counselling I did eventually. I remember I refused to go into the pool for months unless Chelsea came with me, which I knew she couldn't but I didn't want to do it without her.  We spent 10 months of 2007 in ward 46A the PICU of NUH bed 11 everyday trying to understand our new "normal" we all as a family had to face.

Then she came out of hospital, in her wheelchair with her fancy ventilator, fancy hospital bed, and whole new bedroom and a whole new Chelsea. Me being her younger sister, i couldn't take it, i couldn't sleep without being in the same room as her because i would have nightmares that she was gonna die, and for some reason I thought if I was there in the room she wouldn't leave me. She would fight off any demon to stay with me, for us to comfort each other when our parents fight, to sing on our playstation some more, to watch more Hannah Montana. She would just hang on for me and i could save her, fix her just simply help her.

Me as a 6 year old thinking I could defy all odd's and be someone's reason to live.. What was I thinking??

So we both went back to school together, trying to get used to our new normal.. of monthly hospital appointments, jumping at every single sound of an alarm, having to deal with the possibility that we don't know how long any of this will last. 

I would always think, how long will i be able to call Chelsea my sister, how long will we get to ear B&J ice cream together, how long will we be able to do anything. Because even the doctors couldn't give us a timeframe, it was kinda worse then cancer because with cancer you get a timeframe, all we got was "value every moment, we don't know how long this will last"

And that was it, I mean I'm missing out all the drama that i cant even remember because there was a lot of drama... A LOT of drama.. 

But that kind of gives a back story of how my life was turned into the caregivers role of the family.. going in and out of school because we couldn't afford it, or giving up friends because non of them understood that I cant hang out every single weekend like I want to. 

I had a commitment to my family and to Chelsea to help her with everything, even when she didn't want me.