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There's more to define Jenna (Langer) Vancura's  life than her battle with cancer. But her illness has consumed a lot of it.

The 27-year-old New Ulm, Minnesota, native spent much of her senior year in high school at the Mayo Clinic.

"I remember sitting in the room with either of my parents on either side of them and the doctor put the CT scan up on the wall and he said, 'obviously this is cancer,' and all I remember is my parents crying next to me," 

she told MPR's Kerry Miller during a 2012 Daily Circuit program on young people with cancer. 

"You just pack up your life and move into the hospital," she said, acknowledging that it was an abrupt end to childhood.

By the time she was 25, she had already had three bouts of cancer.

MPR News colleague Emily Kaiser, who was moved to join the bone marrow registry because of Jenna's story, 

documented the meeting Langer had in November 2012

 when she met the woman who donated her bone marrow to help save her life.

In a perfect world, the story would have a happy ending. But it's not a perfect world.

 she announces that her illness has reached a new stage.

She and her husband were going to go away this weekend. Then they got into a car accident on Monday. Then she got sick, and then she got this week's news.

NewsCut

Bob Collins

Author

There's more to define Jenna Vancura's life than her battle with cancer. But her illness has consumed a lot of it.  The 27-year-old New Ulm native spent much of her senior year in high school at the Mayo Clinic.

Eleven years after cancer diagnosis, the bad news

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