Book Review of Jade – Forever in My Heart
Reality TV Star Jade Goody Wrote About Cancer Battle
May 8, 2009
Jade: Forever in My Heart: The Story of My Battle Against Cancer, published by HarperCollins on April 16, 2009, (ISBN No. 978-0-00-723718-0) is a diary of Goody’s final seven months. Her mom, Jackiey Budden, has written the foreword and epilogue to the book, which includes colour photos of Goody in her early years, with friends, family, and in the media spotlight, after she appeared on Big Brother.
Jade: Forever in My Heart: The Story of My Battle Against Cancer takes readers through Goody’s struggle to come to terms with her illness after her doctor gave her the diagnosis in August 2008, while she was on the set of India’s Big Brother reality TV show, where she was a contestant. She had to fly home to England immediately.
Jade Goody's Final Months
Jade: Forever in My Heart: The Story of My Battle Against Cancer follows Goody’s journey through a hysterectomy, radiation and chemotherapy treatments, to her last Christmas, dealing with the incarceration for assault and subsequent release of her boyfriend Jack Tweed, learning she had weeks left to live, and her wedding to Tweed in February 2009, complete with “Bridezilla”-like moments.
Goody’s love and concern for her two young boys, Bobby and Freddy, is apparent in nearly every page of Jade: Forever in My Heart: The Story of My Battle Against Cancer. Like any mom, generally speaking, she worried whether they’ll be raised right, such as their having proper manners and finishing their dinners before going out to play. Goody’s boys are the focus of her wish list, the last item in the book.
Goody’s mom takes over writing the diary during the last six days of Goody’s life (she died at home on March 22, 2009), where she became too weak to speak and slept most of the time. Her physical decline becomes apparent throughout Jade: Forever in My Heart: The Story of My Battle Against Cancer, but her personality remains strong. She told a neighbour, upset over the media presence, “I’ll be dead in 10 minutes,” anyway.
Jade Goody's Diary Versus the Living TV Series
Goody’s battle with cancer has been documented in a TV series for Britian’s Living TV, but Jade: Forever in My Heart: The Story of My Battle Against Cancer, delves deeper than the cameras. It’s the details that may pull at readers’ heartstrings. For instance, it’s unlikely many 27-year-olds are told they should draw up a will or make arrangements for their children.
Goody described the physical effects of her cancer, as well, writing about being weak and in pain, frequently vomiting and undergoing surgeries, suffering from mouth sores and dryness, and bleeding black, tarry-looking material that doctors told her was bits of womb the cancer was stripping away. “My body just feels like one big organ now,” Goody wrote toward the end. “Not something that belongs to me, just a failing machine doctors keep poking at.”
Jade: Forever in My Heart: The Story of My Battle Against Cancer is an honest, heart-wrenching and funny diary recounting Goody’s fight against cervical cancer and trying to make the most of the time she had left. Her sons and her new husband kept her going. Everything she did after learning she would die was for her boys, namely, banking any money she made from media interviews into a trust fund for them.
