Jessie's Diary

Jessie Whitmore, who lived in Swanley in Kent in south-east England, was beautiful, caring, and had a wicked sense of humour. The moment she walked into a room you knew she was there. She had time for everyone, young and old. At the age of sixteen, a week before her GCSE school exams, Jessie was diagnosed with leukaemia. She started taking oral medication, and her doctor arranged for her to have IVF so her eggs could be saved as there was a chance she could be affected by chemotherapy. Jessie bravely went through her treatment without seeking sympathy or undue attention. She did her very best to have as normal a life as she could, despite her illness. After a while it became obvious, unfortunately, that the oral medication wasn’t working. Jessie was advised that she would at some point need to have a bone marrow transplant and intravenous chemotherapy. Jessie chose to have the transplant as soon as she could and she started helping her medical team find a matching donor. Finally a match was found. On the June day in 2005 when Jessie was admitted to King’s College Hospital, London, her aunt Debbie gave her a notebook and suggested to Jessie that she keep a diary as Jessie was going to be in hospital for about six weeks. This book, ‘Jessie’s Diary’, is what Jessie wrote. The bone marrow transplant went well but the side-effects of the chemotherapy that accompanied it were unfortunately too much for Jessie, and this led to her death.