The Daily Mail

We were approached by Clare Campbell to share Jane’s story again ‘but in a different way’  than previously. This again for The Daily Mail but six years after the original publication. I found myself giving a lengthy telephone interview going over old ground but for a new readership. A donation would be made to Leukaemia Care and contact details for the Leukaema Research Fund would be given at the end of the article.

The resulting article, For the love of our Jane, was well received, so we heard from friends. Some thought it showed our ‘helplessness’ as a family in the face of such an ordeal. I don’t think we were that helpless as, apart from holding down demanding time-consuming jobs,  and her two brothers with their schooling, all our energies were focused on Jane’s treatment and survival but it was certainly a difficult, often nerve-wracking, exhausting period with an unknown outcome.

We were told by friends that on the day of publication, December 13, 1999, packed carriages on the Underground could be seen focused on Jane’s story in wide-open newspapers. Similar sights were to be seen on London buses and in cafes.

We did learn via an excited phone-call from a young employee for the Leukaemia Research Fund that more money had been raised by that one article in the Daily Mail than the whole of their Christmas appeal.