Jessica Catherine Randall
6/6/90 – 6/9/07
Forever 17
Jessica led an extremely NORMAL childhood up until April 4, 2006. On this day, at the age of 15, she experienced something extremely ABNORMAL: a grand mal seizure.
We visited many doctors and specialists and she finally had an MRI on May 25, 2006 which showed a lesion in her brain; in the left lateral ventricle. Resection surgery by craniotomy was performed on June 8, 2006; two days after her 16th birthday. Eighty to 90 percent of the tumor was removed, and pathology revealed it to be malignant: Grade 3 (anaplastic) astrocytoma.
Jessica received the “standard” treatment for a high grade glioma: radiation with concomitant chemotherapy (Temodar). Things went along fairly smoothly for quite a few months, but not without some hurdles. She continued to suffer from seizures, but we were able to control them pretty well with medication.
In January, 2007, an MRI showed enhancement of the original tumor site. It was decided that the chemotherapy was no longer acting effectively. We decided to enroll in a clinical study at DC Children’s National Medical Center. In February, 2007, a spinal MRI revealed a new mass in her lumbar spine. We went ahead with the study (involving a proven chemotherapy drug, along with an anti-angiogenesis therapy which has been shown to prevent the growth and survival of renegade blood vessels that provide the tumor “life”).
Things went downhill from there, with progressive fatigue, memory issues, and headaches. On May 9, 2007 an MRI was performed that provided us with devastating news. There was a new mass behind Jessica’s brainstem. Because of this development, we could no longer participate in the study, and we brought Jessica home on Hospice.
Jessica’s health declined quickly, but Hospice was amazing and we were able to keep her home and to keep her comfortable. We shared many good long-lasting memories, and her soul mate Joel came from Minnesota and spent Jessica’s last weeks right by her side.
Jessica earned her Angel wings on June 9, 2007; three days after her 17th birthday. She was at home, where she wanted to be; surrounded by her Mom, Dad, brother Jake, and boyfriend Joel.
For more information about Jessica and her journey, please visit http://caringbridge.org/visit/jessicarandall.
Jessica was an incredibly creative, old soul. She left behind countless pieces of artwork, journal entries, poems, and photographs. Her family will hopefully publish some of her work in the coming years. Stay tuned ... :)
Some of Jessica's art and photos can be viewed at the website she started (but never finished): http://teacups.nu.
i like the thought of us as aspen trees.
you can block the wind and i'll take all the sunlight. we'll share roots and intertwine branches like arms and some other tree will knock into you and you'll fall into me and say "oops" and i'll embrace you. we'll change colors at the same time, and admire how bold we'll be in the yellows i use to paint sunshine and ripe lemons. we'll both be taller and sharing the same air, hopefully on a mountain with a view.
once we've regenerated and our matter returns to the earth, i hope we process into something new, together. i hope if i turn into photochemical smog, you'll be a part of the sky, too, and together we'll make sunsets over cities and oceans for lovers to hold hands to and whisper in each others' ears. i want us to be great, always. to be russian and cold and in love. to have been muses in the renaissance or humanist poets. perhaps astronomers, mathematicians, philosophers in ancient greece. i want us to live and have lived every great life and existence possible throughout the lifespan of this time-space continuum.
we're both part of this cataclysmic universe and were together since the beginning. i imagine we'll be part of the domino effect until everything is gone. so what i'm saying is, we can fall in love with each other over and over.
i wouldn't ever have to let you go.Jessica Catherine Randall
5/26/06
aye!
i think that no matter when, no matter why, no matter what, i'll die happy, because there's this part of my personality that persists, that abolishes all self-hate, and maybe that ability to produce language and perceive the world in a multitude of ways that can be flat pressed allows me to feel accomplished no matter what.
five minutes from now, twenty years from now, i'd be happy, happy, entirely and completely happy. i'll always have love and poetry, even if only through metaphor, and the experience of history that i hold in me.
(i went back and edited this because i realized how stupid i was when i wrote this to assume that i haven't had all of these things my whole life, that i haven't had them all along, that i'm not really just living walking around experiencing and that life for me isn't anything more than one big experiment where i take notation after notation and have given up on memorizing formulas.)
do i contradict myself, very well then, i contradict myself.
i am large and contain multitudes.thanks whitman.
Jessica Randall
12/11/05 (5 mo. before diagnosis)
it comes down to moments like this, moments when your world equals clarity and confusion simultaneously. moments when you realize the profound. you don't have to be a monk living on the highest peak in tibet. all you ever had to do was open your eyes, open your heart, open yourself up to see.
i'm not afraid anymore. not entirely, but almost. i'm living every moment, every inhalation. this is life, terrible and exquisite, taking steps, crossing bridges and skylines and glittering within arm's reach.Jessica Catherine Randall
7/12/06
and i adore:
· catching sunsets and trying to name every watercolor in the sky.
· having someone's arms around me and disappearing into them for a moment.
· books. besides romance, love, and poetry, there is nothing i like more.
· photographs. old, new, mine, other's.
· dreaming about the future.
· when my friends and family are happy. more than anything.
and i have resolutions:
· look people in the eye without becoming afraid.
· for each thought of guns have a thought of blue waves.
· speak with care. listen with care.
· remember the percentage of liquid in the human body.
· remember the desert.Jessica Catherine Randall
7/13/06
