Mom’s Vegetarian Diet Blamed for Low Iron Until a Doctor Sent Her for Tests. Now, She’s Terminal

Jenny Garner, 41, learned she had low iron when she went to donate blood — it turned out to be a sign of colon cancer

A mom’s low iron was written off as a side effect of her vegetarian diet — but it was a sign of internal bleeding from cancer.

Jenny Garner’s low iron was first flagged when she went to donate blood last November. “I had just enough [iron levels] to donate,” Garner, 41, said, according to The Daily Mail. “I just assumed it’s because I’m a vegetarian – and I was told not to worry.”

The mom of three, who hails from the English town of Stockport, said she was advised to see her doctor, who noticed her iron levels had been steadily dropping since 2023. Her doctor suspected internal bleeding, and tested her stool for blood.

Garner said she was told, “‘I don’t think for a second you have cancer, you have no symptoms but we need to rule it out.’ “

When the results came back positive, Garner underwent a colonoscopy; That’s when she says doctors found “an angry red thing … and it was bleeding.”

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“I asked what it was and they said they’ll discuss it with me later. I knew then it wasn’t good.”

The verdict was colon cancer, Garner said, and this past January she underwent surgery to remove the tumor. But a month after the surgery, she was feeling abdominal pain — which turned out to be caused by enlarged lymph nodes behind her stomach. 

She shared that doctors told her it would be too risky to remove the lymph nodes; her diagnosis, then, was terminal.

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“I don’t remember really reacting. I was stunned. It was totally surreal and it was all a bit of a blur,” Garner, who shares Isabelle, 14, Thomas, 11 and Charlotte, 10, with her husband Mike, a naval officer. “This is not something you expect at 41, to be told you haven’t got long left. My first thoughts were my children.”

Her family has set up a GoFundMe to pay for “additional specialist treatments, which have been proven to be effective, particularly against her strain of cancer” — but aren’t covered in the UK. 

She’s undergoing chemotherapy every two weeks, and says, “It’s hard even now to believe that this is happening to me – but I’m not giving up.”

Colorectal cancer rates among people younger than 50 have increased by 2.4% per year, the American Cancer Society reports — and mortality rates have increased by 1% per year. Current guidelines recommend that everyone between the ages of the 45 to 75 be screened for colorectal cancer, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control reports.