Kristi Parsons has Breast Cancer

Hello All,

My lovely 49 year old sister Kristi was diagnosed with Stage 4 metastatic breast cancer in May, unfortunately by the time it was diagnosed the cancer was already in her bones. She is a dedicated single mum with a happy vibrant 6 year old daughter, Imogen, who she conceived via a sperm donor. Kristi also has bipolar disorder and fought for years to be well enough to be a mum before she tried to conceive and now has another huge challenge ahead of her, one that she is desperate to overcome so that she can continue to live her best life with Imi, her family and friends.

Kristi is well known in the Erskineville community due to her creation of a communal garden and her love of ‘PIF’ groups - the paying it forward of goods, services and kindness and through these groups has made solid local connections. For the second year in a row she is the class parent at Imogen’s school, she had always wanted to be very involved with the school so it was a bit of a blow that she was in hospital recovering from her double masectomy on the day of the school fete instead of being able to help, she is however organising the school disco which should be a lot of fun. As a sole parent she struggled to find support so she formed a network of other single mothers who used donor sperm and hosted numerous social outings and made some great friendships with the other women, she has also helped other single mums connect with each other in their local areas. Kristi is very involved in the international donor conception community and to this end created a Facebook group which is growing daily with over 2100 members who go there for support as parents of donor conceived children, this has given them the opportunity to join a wider community of kind informative people and keeps Kristi quite busy. Kristi has now also created a support group for Australian and New Zealand single mums with breast cancer.

Her treatment is expensive, even with Australia’s awesome Medicare the gap is quite large eg, she has an IV drug with her chemo which is not on the PBS and is priced at $6k which is a significant cost especially for a single mum. She needed a dishwasher, a cleaner and a food service so that she doesn’t have to worry about many household chores while undergoing gruelling treatment plus there are all the costs like childcare, parking, prescription medications, expensive creams and ointments for radiotherapy, specialist fees, scans, etc. The cost is considerable because it encompasses 5 months of chemotherapy, a double mastectomy and lymph nodes removal, 7 weeks of radiotherapy, ovaries and fallopian tubes removal and 9 months of more chemotherapy plus 10 years of hormone therapy.

Your ongoing support is greatly appreciated.

Love,

Amber