Matei's Fight for Family After Cancer

Hello!!

My name is Matei. My husband and I have been together for 10 years, married for 5. As a queer couple, we have dreamed of raising a child to be a better human for our society. We have tried adopting; however, it is upwards of $30,000! We became licensed foster parents, and we never received a child (probably because it was COVID).

I was diagnosed with brain cancer in January of this year. Luckily, my tumor was removed on January 20, 2025, and I have had no side effects. Specifically, I had a Grade 3 Astrocytoma, and I have a pretty dang good outlook! It’s aggressive, but slow too. My critical illness insurance paid us $20,000!! We immediately knew we were going to use it towards building our family! My husband's twin sister, Emily, wants to provide the egg and carry our baby!

We got started with the IVF process; I had to spend a week in NYC providing samples before I began radiation and chemotherapy.

We thought $20,000 would be enough, but we found out that this is not the case! It costs more… We felt our hopes and dreams of being parents get thrown out of the window.

Feeling hopeless, we remembered that the public can be very charitable. It’s weird and odd begging for money from strangers, but that’s what we are doing. We are begging for any financial assistance you could give to help us afford IVF. We have $20,000 already!!! We just need about $10,000 more to cover it.