"Everyone tells me I'll get better, but I'm having a hard time believing them. I'm just so afraid of dying. What if I don't make it? What if I die...? I'm scared of death. I have so much planned for the future. No one should die when they're seventeen" (Stokke, 19)
Regine Stokke was your typical teenage girl until her life got flipped upside down when she was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia. She shares her personal experiences and her views, via blog, about her cancer to not only document how she was living with the disease, but to make people aware of what they could do to help. For instance she wrote, “I’m very concerned with getting people to register as blood and bone marrow donors… I hope people just go out and do it instead of dragging their heels and “thinking about it.” That one simple act can save lives. And isn’t it rewarding to do something for others?” (Stokke 124) This shows how unselfish she was and truly did things to spread awareness for people living with cancer. You could not help but to root for Regine until the end.
Eli Ann and Martin are Regine's closest friends. They helped Regine fight her battle with Leukemia from the beginning to the end. Regines friends meant the world to her because they were people who really changed her as a person. When she got cancer, she tried to spend as much time with her friends as she could. They made her feel like a normal person and did not treat her like some fragile cancer patient. Regine wrote in her blog, “I try to do things that help me to forget my illness, if only for a little while. The best thing that my friends can do for me is make me forget” (Stokke, 149)
The doctors that helped Regine are also very important to the book. They helped her with her day-to-day struggles and truly wanted to help her defeat this cancer. Because it was such a rare form of leukemia, no one really knew what to do to cure it. They tried chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant. Nothing seemed to work. They refused to give up and kept trying to solve the mystery. “It was amazing to meet with the St. Olav doctors and nurses again. They’re incredible, and we had a lot to talk about. Not only are they nice, but they’re also super-talented!” (Stokke, 133)