Jessie's Story

In April 2024 our 3 year old little girl Jessie was having the best time with her brothers on a seaside holiday in Wales when she started to complain of severe ankle pain.

We took Jessie to A&E as the pain had become unbearable and was advised it would be a ‘flu like’ pain in her joints, from a viral infection. The pain continued over the next 5 days where Jessie visited 3 different hospitals, on our 4th Visit to A&E we refused to leave as she had developed a limp and the pain had increased. It was that day on 6th April 2024 we received the heartbreaking news, Jessie’s bloods had indicated she had Leukaemia.

The following day our consultant confirmed Jessie had ALL B-Cell Leukaemia.

Jessie is being cared for by an incredible team at Birmingham Children’s Hospital and although she still has a full 12 months of maintenance chemotherapy ahead she has responded positively to her treatment and shown such resilience throughout.

Like everyone’s cancer journey, it’s not just the ‘diagnosis’ Jessie received her first platelet transfusion on 26th June and had an anaphylactic reaction, we thought we had lost her. A month later she had her line accessed as normal and reacted to a ‘septic shower’ where an infection in the line is pushed through into the bloodstream. Jessie went into septic shock meaning she was blue and unresponsive, again we thought the worst!

Here we are 13 months in and Jessie’s brothers Jack (12) Max (8) have suffered massively though this journey too and we as parents have found it hard at times to answer questions we never thought we would be faced with. ‘Will Jessie go to heaven? Will she always have no hair? Will she ever be able to come to school with us?’

We have always told the boys, we do everything in our power to get us through this and we are incredibly proud of all 3 children for getting to where we are today!

The children have been desperate for us to have some time together and now Jessie has her ‘wigglies’ removed, they are so excited about swimming in the pool together! Thank you to Ben Saunders foundation for allowing us to spend some much needed quality time together, we are extremely grateful.

The Kettle Family