Jenny’s Healing Fund

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Our beloved friend Jenny is in a courageous dance with cancer, and her community is gathering around her with care.

A profoundly creative being, grower of nourishing food, dazzling writer, and true devotee of fun, Jenny has given so much to this island and far beyond it. Through the decadence of her words, the vitality of the food she has tended, and the unmistakable brightness of her spirit, she has fed our imaginations and our hearts. Now, we are offered the rare and meaningful opportunity to shine that generosity back toward her— in service of health, vitality, and love.

And so, Jenny’s Healing Fund is born.

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About our fundraising goal:

Our initial fundraising milestone is $26,000, which helps cover immediate and urgent needs. The full amount needed to support Jenny through this time is approximately $50,000, and we will update the fundraiser goal as we move forward. We are deeply grateful for every contribution, of any size, and especially for the extraordinary support thus far.

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Jenny’s healing path calls for deep rest, care, and spaciousness. Financial support is one tangible way we can walk alongside her. These funds will help make possible travel to appointments, medicines, bodywork, counseling, and the unseen but essential conditions that allow healing to unfold. This support allows Jenny to prioritize her wellbeing while knowing she is held— materially and energetically— by the love, prayers, and goodwill of her widening circles of community.

When we speak of our beloved Jenny, it is hard to do so without mentioning her life partner, lover, and best friend, Mark. Mark is Jenny’s adoring co-creator in life, a builder of worlds, and an unwavering force of love. These funds help amplify the incredible support he offers her every day.

Let us continue to surround Jenny and Mark with care in every way we know how!

No contribution is too small; love is created through many small acts of tending.

Thank you for being part of this circle of care for our dear Jenny.

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From Jenny:

My name is Jenny Vester. I’m a storyteller living a tale in which it’s time to ask for help. I did it first in a dream, a few weeks ago, calling out, “Help Me, Help Me, Help Me” over and over. Calling up, into the unknown.

This GoFundMe calls into more familiar (for me) territory. To the people who love me, the people I’ve met out there (and also the strangers I’m hoping to charm), I’m calling out to you - across this weird internet of double edged swords and funny cats - Please, if you can, help me get help.

Help me because I’m on shaky ground. The medical system has little left to offer me, a Stage 4 cancer patient, besides intravenous chemotherapy (not a cure, only a short delay of death). Rather than lie down and die on a doctors cue, I’d like to explore other healing modalities while I still feel vital (with some achy parts). At the beginning of all this, I chose the standard-of-care path because I was afraid and because it’s what is offered, largely, for free. The medical system undoubtably helped me to this point and I’m grateful to be here, alive and hungry for more time in this body. Maybe, with help, I’ll get out of the metaphorical/pharmaceutical forest I’ve been wandering in for the past three and a half years.

Helpers appear in some form or another in my favourite fairy tales, commonly as talking animals or wise old women/witches (two things I’d like more of in my story). If you know me, you know fairy tales are my jam. One of my very favourite ways to spend time is telling one of those rich old stories to a room of enchanted listeners. Lately though, I’ve been inspired to write new ones.

It’s a good container, the fairy tale. Easy enough to place a character (like me) into some kind of danger so she has to wander in the woods until she fearlessly faces the scary monster stalking her body and mind and is then able to return home (a changed person) to live a long and vital life (let’s say, 88 years, in total, since that’s my goal).

In return for your help, I offer my current cancer story. It will trail off in what I hope is the middle but maybe it’s a whole new beginning! I’m at the point where I need to act with boldness and belief in my healing. Fear threatens me. I hear it in my private thoughts and feel it in my body. But there's lots of hope too. Mostly, I borrow it from stories of people who come through Stage 4 cancer to live long after they were told they would die. If they can do it, then it’s a possibility for me too! (The best book on this subject is Radical Remission by Kelly Turner)

Stories (including fairy tales) work because there is always some element of transformation at the end. How I want to transform from cancer patient into a healed (body/mind/spirit) person! How I want a happy ending! How I want to keep living. To be an Elder in the Lasqueti Community which holds my heart. How I want to keep loving and laughing and learning with my beloveds. I want to make shit happen! I feel sure I’m not done here yet. No, not yet. What about the book(s) I want to write? The puppet shows I want to produce? The kids I want to watch grow up? The work that needs to be done to heal the world?

So I am asking, “Please”. Hoping my words reach the cosmos, the ancestors, and you, dear Reader “Help me find help.”

xoxoxJennyV*

“The Cancer Dance”

Once upon a time a big, smart, funny and beautiful woman had a lovely life. For years she grew big gardens of organic veggies and herbs (was best known for lettuce and starters). Using an aluminum cart fabricated by Mark, her life-mate, she hauled totes of produce up the trail and through the forest to fill the V-Star Varieties roadside stand or set up a table at the Saturday market. She worked physically hard and dreamed of being an artist. (For whatever reason she didn’t quite recognize she already was one as she wrote and told stories, danced, and painted.)

She lived in a little house in the forest with her sweetie, a dog and cat, and some chickens on an off-grid island called Lasqueti. One of her gifts was the ability to organize events so her tribe could come together. After thirty years on the island, building her home, raising her son, wearing many hats, she was well-woven into the web of community she helped to weave. Lasqueti was her home and she was (mostly) happy.

Cancer surprised her the first time in 2013. It was cut from her gut and she took the healing from there, saying no to chemotherapy, using instead: sleep, weed, wheatgrass, walking, a clean diet, and Jin Shin Do, (as well as dancing, writing and reading and loving.) After five years she didn’t have to get tested anymore. She forgot about cancer. Thought she’d had her life wrangle with the disease.

Then cancer knocked on her door again. She didn’t hear the knocking and she didn’t feel cancer come on in and make itself at home either. If her unpredictable rescue dog (a traumatized beast she and Mark adopted at the beginning of Covid) hadn’t pulled her over a log in the woods on a fine Spring day in March, she might not have had time to be alerted to the intruder.

The badly sprained ankle malingered and she finally went to her doctor hoping for an X-ray. The doctor said no, that soft tissue was slow to heal, she was fine, but also over fifty now. A good time to do a full check up. A few weeks later, at the beginning of May, that good doctor reviewed blood work that was normal but during the physical exam, found a lump in Jenny’s left breast. “Lumpy bumpy,” were the doctors actual words and a requisition for biopsy was immediately sent off. An appointment was scheduled for almost a month later. A stressful month of waiting that cancer took advantage of.

In June of 2022, after being subjected to needles and scans and radiation (and more stress) she was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. It had spread from the breasts (unwanted pendulous breasts from the time they appeared at age 11), into lymph and bones.

“Incurable, but treatable,” said the doctor

Incurable. A word she never could digest. Afraid, trembling in her boots even, she bravely took the pills the medical system directed at her. She took injections too and nuclear medicine for the scans. She learned to read the test reports for the scans which happened every three months, blood work once a month. She printed them all, made a file for herself.

In the meantime, Jenny’s uncommon case prompted the cancer genetics people to get involved and subsequently it was discovered she had a gene, called CHEK2, that predisposed her to both colon and breast cancer. That gene, for whatever reason, had turned on. But with treatment, for just over two years, cancer was on the run. Her bone lesions resolved. The other tumours in her breasts and armpit shrunk so she could no longer feel them.

Great cause for celebration! In March of 2023, she and Mark, after sixteen years of relationship, got married surrounded by 400 of their beloved friends and family at the Community Hall. People donated money to a honeymoon fund and in the Fall they rode the train from Vancouver to Halifax, taking a month to explore the country, particularly the East Coast.

Wedding! Honeymoon! Adventure! Interesting gifts, she had to admit, that came from cancer.

Time passed. Life was to be LIVED and Jenny did the best she could. Her heart was open to and grateful for every day she woke up next to Mark. Grateful to all the people who loved and supported her, to the island where she lived, to the creativity that kept bubbling up and through her.

To keep the cancer at bay, if not ban it entirely, she bounced on a rebounder and brushed her skin with a natural bristle brush to stimulate her lymph. She took cold showers and swam in the ocean. Every day, at specific times she swallowed handfuls of supplements recommended by the herbalist she consulted with. She brewed herbal teas and took mushroom tinctures and homeopathic drops. She fasted intermittently and kicked sugar and white carbs out of her diet. oldest mind-altering friend, got relegated to special occasions. She read books and listened to podcasts about cancer. Learned the basics of chi gong and started getting body/energy work again. Honestly she tried very hard to be a good girl. Stopped drinking and started microdosing. Even pot, her oldest, steadiest, mind-altering friend, got relegated to special occasions. She was determined to take care of herself.

Eventually though, cancer did what cancer does. It mutated, became resistant to the drugs and started to grow again. The first signs were in the Fall of 2024. The oncologist said it was a predictable progression on the average timeline. The following scans in January, showed it had quickly spread again, all over sternum, spine, ribs, hips and skull and also her liver. If you think she was frightened before, let me tell you how she and Mark, the love of her life, clung to each other when that test report came in at the end of January 2025. !t seems the system gives up on you when the metastases includes the liver. When the oncologist called to say “you have 3-4 months, maybe a year, unless you take this chemo”, she caved.

You see, she was rather afraid of chemo and had thus far said - no, not yet, when offered. More of a believer in plant medicine, in energy, in magic, she was also aware that cancer is not to be fucked with. So, she took the oral chemotherapy. Tried to be cool with it. Made a little prayer to it so it would do only what is necessary (or something better!) But the high dosage blistered her mouth and throat so she could barely swallow. A lesser dose burned her feet and hands. She soldiered on, believing you had to suffer if you took chemo until she was forced to take a week off from dance rehearsals so her blistered tootsies could heal. Her husband peeled the skin from her feet every night. She took a a month long break from the chemo. She cried and crept around her garden, needing to be in contact with the earth. It was Spring and she kneeled in the paths surrounded by riotous new green growth. All that life going/growing for it, was true medicine. Also, gardening was no longer a stressful hustle since her nephew took over her small farm business. Freed, allowed to be slow, she tended the land and it took care of her too.

She came through but her dog, Snoop, didn’t. As she felt better and grew stronger he began to say no to their usual long walks in the woods Some say dogs will take the hit for their people -as service to their beloveds. He died after a few weeks of steady weakening. His death was quick and mysterious and Jenny was present, right beside him. (Mark was in Japan with his mom). Snoop took the cancer he could carry. Snoop, that once wild animal turned love-dog, saved her twice!

Time spun on. She and Mark planned a summer holiday and spent the month of August road tripping. In a funny RV called Shirley, they explored northern BC, the Yukon and Haida Gwaii. While travelling, with her doctors blessing, she took only a 50% dose of the oral chemo. When she returned, the next blood work showed a rise in tumour markers. In October, scans showed very slight progression and her oncologist told her it was likely the chemo wasn’t really working and outlined her limited remaining options (three kinds of intravenous chemotherapies with chemical/gibberish names). He didn’t do a great job of selling them, saying it might get her another couple of months (with all the attendant sickness and suffering).

Tumour markers continued to rise in the next two rounds of blood work, and so did a deep and quiet panic. She took a higher dose to help keep the simmering cancer down. Part of her froze while another part of marched onwards. After producing, hosting and performing in the 17th Annual Tsk Tsk Revue (so fun) she was tired. Winter and time for deep rest, was coming. And so was more bad news. The early December scans she’d been waiting for revealed more progression, particularly in her liver.

After crying for five days, she stopped the chemo pills and told her hot and red feet she wouldn’t do that to them again. Then she pulled up her big girl panties. Helplessness was never her strong suit. If she wanted to age to 88, it was time to clear the table of old stuck beliefs she’d been given by a culture where cancer is feared rather than seen as a teacher. Could she do that, see cancer as a teacher?

It was time for action.

A counsellor was called to her support team for the emotional wounds she’s long suppressed. Contacts for Chinese Medicine doctors and naturopaths landed in her inbox. She handed Mark the book “Radical Remission” by Kelly Turner so he could read the many stories of people diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer who continue to outlive the prognosis’s they were given. The stories no doctor or oncologist would ever tell because they give “false hope”. Then Mark believed too and everything seemed possible, again. Old age together. Healed bodies, minds and spirits. New nourishing practices. More road trips in Shirley. A stint of living in Japan. A new dog…

And that’s where the story is now.

In a place of hope (with ever-present fear that must be managed).

In a moment when the woman with the lovely life is able and willing to ask for help. And also to receive it.