Hi everyone, I have started a fundraiser for the family of my friend Kendra Szymarek, who has tragically passed away yesterday at the age of 34. Kendra's twin sister, Kenzie, wrote these beautiful words:

In early 2026 Kendra was diagnosed with epithelioid hemangioendothelioma, a one in a million cancer so rare that only about 150 people in the country are diagnosed with it each year. On top of that she had the most aggressive form of it. Most people diagnosed with EHE live for years, sometimes decades. Kendra had the subtype that spreads to the linings of the lungs and abdomen, where expected survival is measured in months rather than years. She got eight.

There is no standard treatment. There is no established playbook. Her doctors were working with a disease most oncologists never see once in a career.

She fought it for daily. Chemotherapy, immunotherapy, drains in her chest and her abdomen, more procedures than anyone should have to count. She was in and out of the hospital all summer, and in the ICU for the last stretch. She spent weeks on oxygen, days on a ventilator, and she kept getting back up. In the middle of all of it she was standing at her bedside doing step ups, trying to get strong enough to qualify for a clinical trial she never got the chance to reach. She listened to Taylor Swift through every procedure and in her final moments.

She was the one who brought people together. She planned the outings, started the group chats, invented the sayings the rest of us stole. We called ourselves the tweesters, twin + seesters, and she was the funniest, sharpest, most alive person in any room she walked into. She loved hiking and snowboarding and game nights and being outside. Her impact is even seen in the lil ◡̈ that she taught Tommy how to make.

Her boyfriend John and I basically lived in her hospital room for months so she was never alone. She passed surrounded by her family, with messages coming in from people who loved her from all over.

She was dealt an impossibly cruel hand and she played it with more grace and humor than anyone I have ever known.

We are raising money for her celebration of life because she doesn’t want it to be “sead ” Anything at all helps, and so does just knowing her name ✨