My name is Jenna. I have a husband named Derrick and an eight-year-old son named Cameron. 

I was diagnosed with stage four metastatic colon cancer in 2017 at the age of 31. 

My story starts when I was about seven to eight months pregnant with my son, and I was having severe abdominal pains, rectal bleeding, nausea, vomiting — all the signs of pregnancy, actually — so my doctors misdiagnosed me for about a year, and once my son turned one, two weeks later, I was diagnosed with colon cancer. 

I was in complete shock, and my husband and my mom were in the room, and they really just took in the responsibility of knowing what I was supposed to do next and what I was about to go through. 

We left the doctor’s office, they said, "Well, what do you want to do now?", and I said, “I want to go to the sunflower patch by the house.” That’s something I’ve never done, and I’ve always wanted to do it, and today’s the day to do something I’ve never done. 

To get answers, I first went to the internet, I think, like most people do, and I tried to be as detailed as possible in my searches, and I found a patient advocacy group that was connected to my type of cancer, and I reached out. I went to a conference, and they kind of answered all of the questions that I was looking for. 

I think the thing that I was looking for most was a sense of community and hope. So when I got there and I met other people who had been going through the same things that I was going through, it brought a new sense of purpose for me and this disease, and I realized that sometimes things happen to you that are meant to help others. 

During the initial stages of my diagnosis, I did not feel like an active participant, but I don’t know if I wanted to be because I just really didn’t know enough to have an informed input on what I should be doing. 

However, fast forwarding to today, eight years later, I am definitely leading all conversations. I go into the doctor’s office knowing exactly what I want. I feel like I have learned to really speak up about the things that I can handle, the things that I cannot handle, and the things that really just make me not have the quality of life that I expect to have. 

In the beginning, I kind of kept everything to myself because I felt like a burden. You know, there’s a lot that goes into caring for someone with a late-stage disease, and I didn’t want to put that pressure on them. I got to a point where my mom wouldn’t really trust what I was saying, and so she’d pop up and she would see what was really going on, and so we had a long talk, and she says you can’t tell us that everything is fine when you clearly need our support. 

And so now if someone asked me how I’m doing, whether it’s at work or my family, I give them all the details because I think it brings them a little closer to what I’m dealing with so that they can support me better. 

I have had a lot of setbacks with my journey. Every time the cancer comes back, it’s a setback. But I’ve kind of reworded that to say it’s just a setup or a comeback. 

Today, I feel empowered. I feel very confident. What I’m doing has gotten me this far, and I just know that I have all the pieces that I need to continue on this journey. 

I want people to be able to look up my story and maybe resonate with something that they might see within their own selves. I really want to be a source of comfort. You can still wake up and smile each day. You can still have hope and goals. That is really what my message is all about.