FOR THE LOVE OF JEAN

The Jean Team of Cousins is organizing this fundraiser on behalf of Jean Schoon.

Donation protected

Our names are Robyn West and Cindy Sullivan. We have started this GoFundMe page to raise funds to help our beloved cousin, Jean Nelson Schoon, fight a grave illness.

In April 2023 Jean was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia (AML). She was told she had a very short time to live, and an intense chemotherapy regime was recommended that would start with 30 days in the hospital, receiving chemo, followed by a regular routine of chemo treatments for the remainder of her life. Jean was considering this method until it was discovered that the original diagnosis missed some critical information about the rate of her disease progression.

With less urgency to begin immediate, intensive therapy and more time to process what was happening to her, Jean and her doctors considered a number of medical and alternative treatment options. Consistent with Jean's long-held beliefs in the human body's remarkable ability to heal itself when provided with the proper means, she chose a strict nutrition therapy regimen under the care of a nutritionist which includes detoxification and supplementation to support her body's natural healing and disrupt the disease processes.

At the same time, under the care of a medical doctor, she has been receiving Vitamin C and Ozone therapies. She has been faring quite well using these treatments, seeing improved energy levels, increased stamina, and less illness, but she is running out of funds to pay for them, as they are not covered by insurance.

There are other treatments she would like to try as well, like stem cell injections and targeted chemotherapy that is designed based on a person’s specific genetics. However, these treatments are out of the question for her without financial help. Note: That’s where YOU come in!

Jean and her husband, Harv, own a farm outside of St Cloud, Minnesota. Their background is traditional dairy farming, which was a very successful endeavor for many years until a devastating fire forced them to start over. After years of trying, they finally settled on a property where they could create the wholesome, sustainable farm of their dreams in 2020. While living in a camper on the new property, they built a farm store with a home above it, then Harv began to create the pastures and outbuildings necessary to provide grass-fed products to their customers. In addition to cows, they have pigs, chickens, goats, and donkeys, along with a menagerie of kittens and rabbits.

They envisioned and have created a beautiful farm where they could offer not only the highest quality and most agriculturally responsible food to their customers, but also farm tours and events for people (especially their grandkids) to enjoy. With their noble vision in mind and a promising customer base, Jean and Harv took on the necessary debt to make their farm business operational. It was still in its infancy when Jean was diagnosed.

AML causes a person to experience debilitating fatigue and has made it impossible for Jean to continue to run the store as she had been doing. They don’t have the funds to hire someone to run the store, so they have had to close it. Though physical help is never far away, thanks to numerous family, friends, and neighbors, as well as a wonderful farmhand, the majority of the burden of farming is falling on Harv alone.

To know Jean is to love her, and we, Robyn and Cindy, see ourselves as representatives of the many people in Jean’s life that want her to stay with us for as long as is possible. This includes, most especially, her 2 daughters, their husbands and her 5 grandchildren—all of whom are so worried about losing her prematurely.

This GoFundMe page is a way to organize Jean’s wide-spread community (and friends of her community, we hope) to be able to donate whatever we each can in order to create a fund that will make it possible for her to take advantage of treatments that can improve and even restore her health without breaking her down and causing the high likelihood of secondary cancers and heart disease that often follow traditional chemo.

Even standard treatments covered by most insurance plans come with onerous co-pays and deductibles that would put them financially out of reach for Jean. However, Jean is more interested in, first, (umbilical) stem cell treatments that stimulate a person’s own fighter cells—which, in some cases, is all a person needs to start to regain health. The cost for stem cell injections ranges from $1,500 - $5,000 per treatment. The second treatment she is interested in—which is recommended to her by the doctor that is providing her current treatments—is to begin seeing an oncologist in Mankato, Minnesota, whose treatments are not covered by insurance. His specialty is using a person’s specific DNA to determine the best chemotherapy approach for that individual. The cost for each treatment is $10,000. She won’t know how many of the treatments she will need until she has a consultation with him—which is $450 itself. In addition, the process involves sending blood samples to Greece to get the information needed about her DNA, which costs $3500. She will also need to cover the cost of room and board while in Mankato for treatments, as it is too far from home to commute.