Help cancer survivor realize her dream of a child

When the world shut down in 2020, it also shut down for my youngest sister, Katie McKnight, when she found out she had the most aggressive type of breast cancer at the age of 30.

Married only one year in California, she and her husband had been planning to start a family, only to have that dream abruptly torn away, left in the cold reality that first she had to survive. She had to fight a legacy of cancer caused by a mutated BRCA gene that has haunted our family for generations in the United States and Ireland, and took away our grandmother before we were even born.

Katie did everything right with early genetic testing in her 20s, but still the doctors missed detecting her cancer in its earliest stages. Ahead of chemotherapy and a double mastectomy, Katie rushed to begin the in vitro fertilization process in the hopes that one day she would survive cancer and that her dream of having a family of her own could still be realized.

But now, with her cancer in remission, and having undergone five breast reconstruction surgeries, she can't afford to get the embryos that she preserved out of a freezer in California because her health insurance refuses to cover IVF treatment. The state, hailed for its progressive policies in women's health, does not require that insurance companies cover IVF.

Katie has already had to fight cancer, and now is taking the fight to insurance companies and the state government, which is a daunting task when in the best of health, let alone when your body and mind have already been through so much. If there's anyone who can get the job done, though, it's our Katie, who has joined the board of Bay Area Young Survivors, a support group for young breast cancer patients. She now donates much of her time to helping others in San Francisco struggling with breast cancer when she's not working full time as an environmental scientist/planner at a local nonprofit.

We don't want Katie to have to sacrifice her dream of having a child so we are asking for donations to allow Katie and her husband Nate to be able to unfreeze their embryos and start their family. They hope to implant an embryo as soon as this year, worried that time is of the essence as ovarian cancer is the next fear. Any excess funds will be donated to help others struggling with cancer.

You can read more about Katie's story here, featured on March 31 in The Los Angeles Times:

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-03-31/ivf-isnt-covered-by-insurance-in-california-hopeful-parents-are-struggling-to-afford-fertility-care

Featured in an opinion article in The Mercury News:

https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/08/30/opinion-california-infertility-treatment-bill-enables-family-dreams/

More on Katie's work at BAYs group for young survivors: https://bayareayoungsurvivors.org/katie-mcknight/