UTAH (KUTV) — A 39-year-old Utah mother of five who has never smoked is preparing for a rare double-lung transplant after Stage 4 lung cancer left her dependent on oxygen and with few treatment options remaining.
One year ago, Kelsey Flake was running a half marathon. Now, according to her family, she cannot walk across a room without oxygen.
“Kelsey has never smoked a cigarette in her life. Today, she has Stage 4 lung cancer,” her brother, John, wrote in a GoFundMe created to help the family through the next year.
Flake was born with a rare genetic variant that her family says predisposes her to lung damage and lung cancer. Four of her six siblings also carry the variant.
She was diagnosed with a rare form of lung cancer in 2024 and underwent chemotherapy, surgery and immunotherapy. For a time, her family said scans showed no evidence of active disease.
Then the cancer returned in both lungs in January.
“Since the cancer returned in January, Kelsey and her care team have fought for every possible option to slow it down,” her brother wrote. “She has been through another round of aggressive treatment, but the cancer has continued to progress.”
Her family says Flake now has 41% lung capacity and requires oxygen full time.
Before getting sick, Flake was a Division I college swimmer and triathlete. She and her husband, Jacob, built a real estate business while raising their five children, Hannah, 15, Elizabeth, 13, Oliver, 11, Chloe, 8, and Grant, 6.
As treatment options dwindled, the family found a program in Chicago offering something that historically has not been available to most patients with advanced lung cancer: a double-lung transplant.
The Northwestern Medicine DREAM Program, short for Double Lung Transplant Registry Aimed for Lung-limited Malignancies, is an observational study offering double-lung transplantation to certain patients whose cancer is confined to their lungs and is no longer responding to other treatments. Northwestern says patients with cancer historically have not been eligible for lung transplantation because of concerns that the cancer could return or spread. The Northwestern Medicine Canning Thoracic Institute DREAM Program | Northwestern Medicine
Flake’s family says she completed the extensive evaluation process and was expected to begin the transplant process Tuesday at Northwestern Medicine. A slight delay in final insurance approval pushed the first-stage surgery to Thursday. The family says the insurance issue has since been resolved and the procedure is set to move forward.
Surgeons are expected to remove at least one of Flake’s lungs during the first stage. After Thursday’s surgery, she will officially be listed for donor lungs. Her family says a match could come within a few hours or take several days. Flake will remain in a medically induced coma while she waits for donor lungs and until doctors can complete the second-stage surgery to transplant them.The approach represents a significant shift in how doctors are treating a highly selected group of patients with advanced lung cancer.
A Northwestern Medicine study published July 8 in JAMA examined 98 patients with medically refractory, lung-limited Stage 4 non-small cell lung cancer. Seventeen received lung transplants, while 81 who met medical eligibility requirements but did not receive transplants because of nonbiological barriers continued with medical treatment.
Researchers reported an estimated one-year overall survival rate of 100% among the 17 transplant recipients, compared with 40.8% among the patients who received medical management alone. At extended follow-up through Jan. 31, 2026, two of the transplant recipients had died. Researchers cautioned that longer-term follow-up and quality-of-life assessments are still needed.
“This work changes what we can imagine for a highly selected group of patients who were previously considered beyond the reach of curative-intent intervention,” Dr. Ankit Bharat, chief of thoracic surgery and director of Northwestern’s Canning Thoracic Institute, said when the research was released.
Bharat stressed that the procedure is not an option for everyone with advanced lung cancer.
“We are not saying lung transplant is appropriate for every patient with stage IV lung cancer,” Bharat said. “We are saying that when the cancer is rigorously proven to be confined to the lungs, when standard therapies have been exhausted, and when the lungs themselves have become the life-limiting organ, transplantation may offer a new path forward.”
Northwestern says its DREAM Program is intended for patients whose lung cancer is not responding to treatment and who have no other treatment options, along with some patients previously cured of cancer who later develop lung failure but do not qualify under traditional transplant criteria.
For the Flake family, that new path also means temporarily uprooting their lives.
Jacob plans to remain with his wife in Chicago throughout the transplant and recovery. Their five children will initially stay in Utah with their grandparents, according to the family. The goal is to reunite everyone in Chicago around Christmas or New Year’s, homeschool the children there, and remain together until Flake is cleared to return to Utah, potentially next August.
Both Kelsey and Jacob are self-employed in real estate, and the family expects their ability to work to be significantly reduced while living in Chicago.
A GoFundMe has been established to help with housing, transportation, food, travel between Utah and Chicago, child care and other living expenses during the family’s relocation. The family says a separate nonprofit medical fundraiser has been established to cover transplant-related medical costs, medications, and medically necessary travel.
“This GoFundMe is intended to help carry that burden so Kelsey and Jacob can focus their energy where it belongs: on Kelsey’s transplant, her recovery, and keeping their family together,” John wrote.
For a woman who was competing in endurance events just a year ago, the transplant represents a chance at something far more personal than another finish line.
“Thank you for helping give Kelsey the chance for more time with the people she loves most,” her brother wrote.
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