My friend Jessica Cohen is my inspiration.
She goes to JCOSS secondary school and is eleven years old. Let me tell you why I think she is
inspirational:
Last summer, Jessica found out that
she had a tumour on her spine. A few
months before this, she had started getting pain in her legs and back but
mostly her legs. This made her feel, in
her words, “upset and frustrated because my legs were sore and I couldn’t do
things I enjoyed like swimming”. The
pain stopped her from getting to sleep sometimes therefore it seemed that it
was starting to become a problem for Jessica. So she went to her doctor who thought it must
have been a sprain or something like that. She was told to do some daily exercises and to
go to the physiotherapist but this caused her a lot of pain as well. After a while she was taken to a children’s spine
specialist who said that she should have an MRI scan. The MRI scan showed something fuzzy on her spine
– it was a tumour. Jessica spent two
weeks in hospital, first at The Royal Free and after that, she moved to Great
Ormond Street Hospital where she found out she was in need of an operation. When she found out that she had to have an
operation she felt excited for the pain to be over however as the operation got
nearer, Jessica started to feel nervous, stressed and scared.
The operation lasted for four or five
hours and was a success. After the
operation, she woke up to see her parents who had bought her two new t-shirts
which she loved! She was not in too much
pain but felt uncomfortable due to the big scar on her spine. Jessica felt relieved that the operation was
over but stressed at the same time because she had missed her school play at
her primary school; Akiva. She missed
roughly three weeks of school and badly missed all of her friends although they
often came to visit and cheered her up by bringing sushi!
About five days after the operation,
Jessica could start walking again!
As if this had not been hard enough
for Jessica and her family, at the same time her grandpa was seriously ill due
to heart failure although he had been ill for a long time. Shortly after her operation, Jessica’s grandpa
sadly passed away. Jessica felt really sad when her grandpa died and really
misses him but she was expecting it because he had been ill for a prolonged
period of time.
Before her operation, Jessica and her
family had been planning to climb Skafell Pike in the Lake District to raise
money for the hospice where her grandpa had been staying. Even though Jessica
could not do that climb after her operation she still wanted to raise money for
this cause that meant a lot to her and her family. So instead, seven weeks after her operation,
she climbed four local hills with her mum, dad, brother, cousins and grandma
(the wife of her grandpa). Jessica did extremely well but at some points, her spine
started to become a little bit sore and tired. She
raised over £10,000 thanks to all the donations she received! All of this money
went to Saint Luke’s Hospice, the place where her grandpa had been living.
Jessica and her family were featured
in three different newspapers; Harrow Observer, Harrow Times and Kilburn Times.
During this incident, Jessica was unable to play sports or run around but
fortunately she is back to normal and happily playing netball in school once
again! In the future Jessica said that
she will do lots of things like this because she loves to raise money for
charity!
