Help Jen Live, Love and Make Memories

My name is Nikki, and I am raising funds for my beautiful friend Jen and her family.

Jen, Rick and their children have been part of our family’s lives for more than 20 years. We have moved countries together, raised our families alongside one another and supported each other through both the hardest times and the happiest moments.

After sharing so much of life together, they are not simply friends to us—they are family.

Jen is a wife, a mum of four, a former foster carer and one of those people who is usually looking after everyone else. Now, after years of surgeries and cancer treatment, I want to help take some of the pressure off Jen, Rick and their children.

Jen was first diagnosed in 2022 with a rare and extremely aggressive high-grade neuroendocrine lung cancer. Her cancer does not fit neatly into the usual categories. Her surgical pathology described a combination of large-cell neuroendocrine carcinoma and small-cell carcinoma.

Since her diagnosis, Jen has undergone two lung operations, chemotherapy, radiation, more chemotherapy and finally the long-awaited opportunity to begin immunotherapy.

Unfortunately, despite everything she has endured, Jen has now been told that the cancer has returned again.

Her scans were reviewed by a multidisciplinary team of around 20 doctors and specialists. They concluded that there had been further growth and that the cancer now involves the pleura—the lining surrounding her lung.

Because of the pleural involvement and Jen’s individual circumstances, further surgery and radiation are no longer being offered. She will continue immunotherapy every three weeks for as long as it keeps the cancer controlled.

Jen is not giving up. She will continue treatment and keep fighting for every bit of time she can get. However, her doctors have been honest that this is an extremely aggressive cancer and that the immunotherapy is expected to eventually stop working.

Alongside cancer, Jen has lived with multiple sclerosis since 2012. This makes her treatment decisions more complicated and limits some of the options available to her. She also lives with nerve pain, weakness, fatigue and the lasting physical effects of two lung operations and years of treatment.

I am creating this fundraiser because I have watched Jen and her family carry the physical, emotional and financial weight of this illness for far too long.

Jen and Rick have spent more than 24 years building their life together. They have four children—Sequoia, Kade, Zayne and TJ—and even while facing such an uncertain future, Jen’s greatest concern remains her family.

We want to be completely honest about how the funds will be used.

The money raised will help with:

• Everyday household and living expenses

• Medical, travel, parking and treatment-related costs

• Supporting the family during treatment and recovery periods

• Maintaining stability for the children

• Unexpected medical and family expenses as Jen’s needs change

• Helping Jen complete meaningful experiences from her bucket list and create lasting memories with the people she loves

This fundraiser is important to me because Jen’s life cannot be reduced to cancer treatments, appointments and scan results.

She deserves some breathing room from the constant financial worry. She deserves opportunities to laugh, spend meaningful time with her family and create memories her children can carry with them forever.

Jen jokingly calls her cancer “Cynthia.” Her humour has helped her survive some incredibly dark days, but behind that humour is a mum trying to process an uncertain future while keeping life as safe and normal as possible for her children.

I cannot take the cancer away. I cannot change what the doctors have told her. But I can try to make sure Jen and her family do not have to carry every part of this alone.

Any contribution, no matter how small, will help relieve some of the financial pressure and give Jen more freedom to focus on her health, her family and living the life she is fighting so hard for.

If you are unable to donate, sharing this fundraiser would mean just as much.

Thank you for helping my beautiful friend do more than simply endure treatment. Thank you for helping Jen live, love and make memories.

As Jen always tells her children:

“Love you forever—FOREVER means FOREVER.” ❤️

Nikki