Jennifer Lunt

“They have been really wonderful,” she said of the Volunteers In Medicine doctors and staff. “Without them I would have been in a world of hurt because I could not have gotten the treatment I needed.”

Jennifer Lunt had just moved to Jacksonville and started a new job with full health care benefits when the recession hit in 2008. Nine months after she started, she was laid off.

Lunt was first diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease in 2001, a chronic digestive disease which at one point left her a skeletal 90 pounds. She went for two years without health care, which she said was a troubling experience. “I could have easily wound up in the ER with obstructions and other complications,” she said. Lunt found work, but nothing that provided health insurance. Coverage through the Affordable Care Act was not an affordable alternative.

Lunt came to Volunteers in Medicine in Nov. 2010, and started getting treatment for Crohn’s at the clinic and also through Mayo Clinic Florida. She began taking Humira, a drug that treats Crohn’s patients, in Jan. 2012, and started feeling much better within a month. By September 2015, the disease was officially in remission. Lunt was also diagnosed with basil cell carcinoma, and was treated through an outside specialist arranged by Volunteers in Medicine.