Jade, our beautiful, spirited, kind girl, was taken too early at the age of 12. Jade had her whole life ahead of her. But on 31 January 2023, for reasons we will never understand, Jade was diagnosed with DIPG. We were all devastated. From the day Jade was born, we knew she was of greatness.  She was demanding and knew her own mind, but at the same time, she cared so much for others. She really was going to make a difference in the world. She did her best to retain her awesome sense of humour, too, often making her doctors laugh at her cheekiness. We wish the world could have seen how funny she was.

As the months went on and we saw Jade decline, we watched this horrific tumour weaken her and knock her down. Her mobility dropped till she was refined to a wheelchair; she lost her ability to speak clearly, was dizzy and had double vision all the time, couldn’t hold down food, vomited several times a day, had horrendous headaches, suffered nerve pain all over her body, and partial seizures, was depressed, sad and broken, she just wanted to be a normal kid again. This wasn’t the Jade that we all knew. Her spark slowly and too fast faded. This was the most horrible thing to watch as a parent.

We held Jade on her final day, whilst she couldn’t breathe, we dosed her up on pain medications, we watched her take her last breath, we are broken, this was torture for our whole family. Although we all fought with everything and hit it with every resource and new treatment we could, the outcome couldn’t be changed. On 18th August at 7.40 am 2023, the tumour won. Jade had DIPG for 6.5 months before it took her life. Jade has a little brother and two big step-sisters; we all miss her dearly.