Burning Down the Blood Factory: A Daddy's Diary of a Battle Against Blood Cancer

In June 2019, three-year-old Artemis was diagnosed with a very rare myelodysplastic blood disorder known as Juvenile Myelomonocytic Leukemia. Any comfort her parents might have had that (despite its name) JMML was not a true ‘leukaemia’, was swiftly dispelled when they discovered that the aggressive nature of the disease combined with its rarity meant that global survival rates were no better than a flip of a coin.

The only known cure for the disease was chemotherapy and an allogenic stem cell transplant which was performed at the Royal Marsden Hospital with stem cells donated by Artemis’ big sister, Matilda.

This is the story of a brave little girl’s epic battle against a cruel disease as told through the eyes of her father, Jody. ‘Burning down the Blood Factory’ is a salutary reminder of not only why it is so important to find kinder and more targeted treatments for childhood cancers and blood disorders, but also of the devastation such diagnoses can wreak on families faced with these diseases.