Help Sarah-Jane West Fight Cancer & Meet Basic Needs

Sarah-Jane has been a Canadian citizen for over 50 years and is an avid and committed animal rescuer and advocate. For decades, she has rescued animals and creatures, from a baby seal to an Arctic fox. She’s helped house and manage a feral cat colony too, getting 37 feral cats spayed, neutered and cared for.

However, she is now faced with the worst crisis of her own life: recovery from cancer and its treatments.

Sarah-Jane's Story: As a senior living alone in Victoria, with her only family, her son, in Ontario, Sarah-Jane was diagnosed with anal cancer this past May 2024. According to the Canadian Cancer Foundation’s Medical Review of February 2024, anal cancer is very rare, with only 600 cases diagnosed each year out of a population of 40.1 million.

While friends and her son have helped as much as they can, and with wonderful donations from animal advocates like herself, Sarah-Jane is facing a very difficult and stressful struggle to recover. The weeks of chemotherapy and radiation treatments were traumatic and hard to tolerate, and the pain from the tumor brought her to tears.

Current Health Status: While the treatments were successful and she has now been in remission for barely three weeks, Sarah-Jane is still fighting to meet her basic needs financially. The radiation has left its awful side effects of extreme fatigue and bowel incontinence, for which she needs to use adult underwear daily and at night, as the radiation has badly damaged her anal area. Her oncologist at the Royal Jubilee Hospital on Vancouver Island said it is rarely permanent but unique to every individual, and she has no idea how long Sarah-Jane will be dealing with this. It is called Radiation Enteritis.

Sarah-Jane's oncologist has also said she could possibly look for part-time work in late January or early February of next year, hopefully if she has recovered from the radiation side effects.

Financial Struggles: While trying to recover and unable to work now for seven months, Sarah-Jane faces the added worries and deep concern for how she will manage to pay her bills, have enough money for basic needs like groceries, her phone, and daily medications not fully covered by Pharmacare. So, she is asking for help from the “kindness of strangers.”

How You Can Help: If you or anyone you know would consider just even a $10 or $20 donation, Sarah-Jane would be so deeply grateful. She knows you don’t know her, but offers you her heartfelt thank you for your great kindness and compassion in considering any support you might care to give.