Jenna’s 2021 GoFundMe was deleted, but with recent scan results threatening a worse prognosis/shorter life expectancy, we decided to create a new one to try to help her do all the things she has wanted to do with her husband and boys as well as having access to holistic treatments she currently cannot fit into her budget.

In April 2019, at just 33 years old, Jenna Lynn Lyons was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was a mother of three young boys, a registered nurse working in a Boston NICU, and a wife trying to navigate the ordinary chaos of raising a family.

She was told her cancer had been caught early. Her prognosis was excellent. She underwent a mastectomy, and an additional emergency surgery, she was told she only needed to take Tamoxifen for 5-10 years. No radiation or chemotherapy. 3 months later, she discovered that important information about her original tumor’s HER2 status had not been properly addressed during her initial treatment. What should have been a hopeful chapter of recovery had turned into a fight for her life. She immediately began chemotherapy, and a year of HER2-targeted treatment. She believed that once she made it through all of that, she would get her life back.

But that isn’t what happened.

In October 2021, after months of increasingly debilitating pain, Jenna learned that her breast cancer had spread extensively throughout her bones. She was just 36 years old.

Jenna was diagnosed with stage IV metastatic breast cancer. It is treatable, but currently considered incurable. She cannot live without cancer treatment and her current treatment seems to be failing.

At the time of her stage IV diagnosis, her youngest son was only five.

Since then, Jenna has endured years of cancer treatments, radiation, surgeries, hospitalizations, and debilitating pain. The cancer has affected her pelvis, sacrum, and other bones, leaving her with permanent mobility limitations. She has undergone surgery to stabilize her sacrum with large screws and often requires a wheelchair for longer distances.

She has lost the nursing career she loved, much of her physical independence, and the financial stability her family once had.

But through it all, she has continued showing up for her children.

She’s the mother cheering from the sidelines at baseball, football, and basketball games, even when simply getting there means enduring hours of pain. She’s the mom documenting the ordinary moments, planning celebrations, laughing with her boys, and trying to make their childhood feel as normal as possible.

She’s also someone who has used her experience to help others. After her metastatic diagnosis, Jenna founded The Little Things, a nonprofit through which she personally assembled and sent hundreds of thoughtful care packages to people facing cancer across the United States and Canada.

Even while fighting for her own life, she wanted other people to feel less alone.

A devastating new chapter:

In November 2026, Jenna received another frightening PET scan. After years of treatment, the imaging raised serious concerns about cancer activity in additional areas, including her adrenal gland, abdominal lymph nodes, and bones.

Her medical team is evaluating what these findings mean and what comes next.

Hours after receiving this devastating news, Jenna watched her oldest son, Colton, score his first varsity football touchdown.

It was one of those moments that captures what she’s fighting so desperately to remain here for.

Not a milestone on a medical chart. Not another scan, surgery, or treatment.

Just a mother getting to watch her son do something extraordinary.

Jenna’s boys are now 16, 13, and 10. They have grown up with their mother’s cancer as part of their lives. She wants more birthdays, more baseball games, more family dinners, more ordinary Tuesdays. She wants to watch them graduate, fall in love, build lives of their own, and become the men they’re meant to be.

She wants the time that so many families get to take for granted.

How you can help:

Living with metastatic cancer has created an enormous financial burden. Years of treatment, medical expenses, disability, reduced income, transportation needs, and the costs of adapting daily life around Jenna’s physical limitations have affected the entire family.

Funds raised will help ease these pressures, support Jenna’s ongoing medical and daily living needs, and allow her family to focus less on financial uncertainty and more on being together.

If you have followed Jenna’s journey online, you know that she shares the reality of metastatic cancer with honesty, humor, vulnerability, and an unwavering love for her children.

She has never wanted her life to be defined by cancer.

She wants to be here long enough for her boys to remember a childhood defined by love, laughter, and the memories they made together—not just by their mother’s illness.

Any contribution, no matter the amount, will make a meaningful difference. If you cannot donate, sharing Jenna’s story is an equally appreciated act of kindness.

Thank you for helping this family carry a little less of the weight.

And thank you for helping Jenna continue fighting for the one thing she wants more than anything else:

More time.