Jessica Wales • Advocates • LLTGL

Jessica Wales is the South East Advocate for Live Life Then Give Life and at just 19 years old, Jessica is the youngest on the team. She has been waiting for a double lung transplant for over 3 years now.

Jessica lives in Kent with her parents and younger brother. Jessica has Cystic Fibrosis and was diagnosed at about 4 months old after battling with a severe pneumonia and managing to recover from an extremely critical condition. From then on, Jessica began the daily medications and treatments to try and keep her well, but she was in and out of hospital regularly with different chest infections.

At the age of 7, Jessica was diagnosed with MRSA and had to stay in hospital for a long time. Once the hospital had managed to get that under control, she remained relatively well until at 11 years old she began to need Intravenous Antibiotics every three months in order to keep infections at bay. Around this time Jessica also had a portacath fitted, to make giving the IV drugs easier, and then was diagnosed with Diabetes and started insulin to bring it under control.

In 2005, Jessica and her family were approached by her doctors who said she might need a transplant. By now she was also being fed via a PEG tube into her stomach to try to maintain her weight, and was using oxygen overnight. Jessica was sent for assessment in July, and following a terrifying prognosis of 2 years without a transplant, went on the waiting list straight away.

That was three years ago now, and Jessica is still waiting. She has already had false alarms, where she was called, went all the way to the hospital, and then it turned out the organs were not viable. Jessica admits she gets scared as she doesn’t know what the future holds, but the fact she has already outlived her prognosis shows what a determined fighter she is and how desperate she is to survive. When asked what keeps her going, Jessica answers simply that she feels she hasn’t lived enough yet.

Jessica’s story has attracted a great deal of Media attention over the years, and she has featured in several national publications including Bella, the Sun and the Mirror. She has also appeared on her local news and in a fundraising video for the LIV appeal which raised £2 Million for Cystic Fibrosis. Recently, Jessica was featured on Noel’s HQ on Sky1, which motivated over 2000 people to sign onto the organ donor register that night. Nothing stops this girl in her fight to raise awareness – and she is brave enough to talk about facing her own death to help people understand just why organ donation is so important.

Jessica says “A transplant to me would mean the world. Not only would I get back my life but my family would get back the girl they used to know.”

Jessica's plea on the BBC