Support Jenna Ursu

My name is Zoë, and I’m going to tell you about my best friend, Jenna, who needs your help.

Jenna, a 30-year old mother of two, has been living with Type 1 Diabetes since she was 13 years old. After being hospitalized for several weeks when diagnosed, she went back to school and tried to navigate the same world that, for her, had completely changed. The disease would be part of the rest of her life. We became friends because one of our teachers, Ms. Mulligan, had Jenna sit next to me in the back of her classroom to help Jenna catch up in school after so much time away.

Since then, Jenna has had struggles with diabetes and health problems associated with that. But Jenna has always overcome these challenges and thrived in life, eventually becoming a mom to Austin and Owen.

Jenna and her husband Kyle live in Calgary, Alberta, and are a happy family. But last year Jenna started to feel sick and went to the hospital again. Jenna was told that she was in end stage kidney failure and would need to start dialysis immediately to stay alive. As a result, Jenna has been waiting for a kidney transplant while her condition has gotten worse; she is no longer able to walk, and has sustained several injuries as a result of this.

Jenna's husband Kyle has been working hard to support their family and take care of Jenna and their boys, but they still need help with medical expenses (which includes medications, special dietary supplements, and all sorts of things related to dialysis treatment). Now it looks like Jenna is too weak to survive a kidney transplant and might not make it.

This fundraiser is to help pay for Jenna’s medical expenses, extra childcare costs that have come up because of Jenna’s illness, and hopefully allow Kyle to take time off of work so that he can spend what little time that Jenna has left with her. In the last months of her life, the last thing that Jenna wants to be worrying about is money. Kyle and the boys would like to spend as much time with Jenna as she has left, and want her to be as comfortable as possible as their family deals with this unbearable tragedy.