ABOUT JESSICA DELEE
JESSICA DELEE
Jessica DeLee was born in Metairie, Louisiana on February 10, 2002. She lived in Slidell, Louisiana and graduated from First Baptist Christian School in 2020.
To know Jessica was to love Jessica.
She was the light in every room she entered with her beautiful smile, always lifting those around her. Jessica’s first passion was to glorify Jesus, but a close second was dirt bike racing. She started riding when she was just 3 years old and began her successful racing career at 4. She always showed love and inspired her family and friends by not just preaching, but by living the word of her savior, Jesus.
Early in 2019, when Jessica was just seventeen years old, she began experiencing excruciating headaches accompanied by deteriorating vision and weight gain. She was visiting doctors every three weeks for multiple months with no diagnosis except to lose weight. Jessica’s parents did not accept this and continued their journey to identify the issues she was facing. They started with an appointment with an eye doctor who discovered swelling behind her eye and recommended a visit with an ophthalmologist.
Before even making it to her appointment, Jessica was brought to the emergency room with an unbearable headache where they conducted a CT scan and revealed a mass on her brain. She was rushed to Ochsner Main Campus that day and was scheduled for a shunt operation to drain the excess fluid in her brain and biopsy of the mass. After two long weeks, on May 24, 2019, Jessica was diagnosed with Anaplastic Astrocytoma, an aggressive brain cancer which has no known cure. Jessica’s cancer also had a rare mutation, which made it stage four. Dr. Ware assured Jessica, “We are going to fight.”
After performing the shunt, Jessica’s oncologist got her accepted into St. Jude
Children’s Research Hospital to attempt trial studies being performed on her
form of brain cancer. St. Jude & the Ronald McDonald House are truly
magical places. The doctors, nurses and everyone on the staff are so passionate
about what they do. Although Jessica and her family were experiencing their
worst nightmare, they found reasons to smile every day due to the care and
compassion that the staff showed them. Upon arriving to St. Jude, Jessica
received 30 rounds of radiation over the course of 2 months.
She was able to take a break when she was granted a Make A Wish trip to Alaska. For a week, Jessica was able to feel normal again as she enjoyed salmon fishing, ziplining through the Alaskan rain forest and white water rafting. After her once in a lifetime trip, Jessica, along with her mom and dad traveled back to St. Jude to officially start her trial study. Jessica went through three months of grueling treatment. She was put on a chemo pill so toxic, it couldn’t be touched by bare hands. Her body endured so many unbearable side effects and after sixteen months, it was determined that her tumor was growing aggressively. Jessica still did not give up. Her mother spent hours on multiple phone calls until they were introduced to Dr. Jay Zhu at UT Health and Neuroscience in Houston for brain tumors. Dr. Zhu treated her from February 2021 until Jessica’s passing on October 10, 2021.
Even after she has passed, Jessica remains an inspiration to anyone she met during her short time on Earth. She was a force to reckoned with on the racetrack and in her treatment. Her dedication to Jesus, positive attitude, resilience to fight, and ability to smile through her pain will live on through the souls she touched during her life.
Now we must fight in Jessica’s name to find a cure so no other child has to die from cancer.
