Kelsey Flake, a 39-year-old mother of five from Cedar Hills, is on full-time oxygen and preparing to undergo a double lung transplant in Chicago after standard treatments failed to stop the stage 4 cancer in both of her lungs. She was scheduled to undergo a preparatory surgery on Thursday to remove scar tissue and get her body ready for transplantation, with the actual transplant occurring in two parts once a donor becomes available.
Flake's diagnosis traces back to a biopsy in September, after she and her family spent about 10 months pursuing multiple diagnostic avenues before reaching an initial diagnosis, according to KSL News. She underwent a right upper lobectomy and received chemotherapy and immunotherapy, but those treatments proved ineffective when repeated. Her cancer remains contained to both lungs, and she currently has just 41% lung capacity. Flake has never smoked tobacco.
To pursue treatment, Flake and her husband, Jacob, moved to Chicago for a year to access care through Northwestern Medicine's research program, while their five children — ages 15, 13, 11, 8 and 6 — stay at home in Utah with their grandparents. The couple hopes the children can join them in Chicago by Christmas and remain until next summer. In the meantime, Flake and her kids hold nightly Zoom calls, and she says staying involved in their lives as much as possible has helped her cope. “Being away from her family is the hardest part right now,” the KSL report notes, describing what Flake herself has said about the separation.
A Pioneering Program for Advanced Lung Cancer
Flake's transplant is possible because of Northwestern Medicine's Double Lung Replacement and Multidisciplinary Care, or DREAM, Program, which the hospital formally launched in March 2023 to offer double lung transplants to select patients whose stage 4 lung cancer is strictly confined to the lungs after other therapies fail. Northwestern Medicine is described as the only facility in the United States providing double lung transplants specifically for cancer patients, per the KSL report. Under the program's surgical protocol, doctors place patients on full heart-lung bypass, remove both cancer-ridden lungs and surrounding lymph nodes at once, and thoroughly wash the airways and chest cavity to eliminate residual cancer cells before implanting donor lungs.
The hospital first performed a double lung transplant as a cancer treatment in 2021, when its inaugural patient was a 54-year-old man in intensive care after progressing on chemotherapy. That patient, cement finisher Albert Khoury, remains cancer-free following his operation. As of May 2025, Northwestern Medicine surgeons had performed more than 50 double lung transplants for patients with advanced lung cancers through the DREAM program, reporting a 100% survival rate among selected recipients, according to HealthDay. A Northwestern Medicine study tracking 17 lung-transplant recipients between 2021 and 2025 found all study participants were still alive as of this summer, while similar patients who received only medical therapy without a transplant had less than half of their group survive, according to the hospital's website.
Waiting for a Donor Match
Doctors anticipate Flake will remain on the transplant waitlist for about one week, and she will be placed on life support while listed for the procedure. Once a donor match is found, her surgery will happen in two parts. Her insurance has approved coverage for the out-of-network double lung transplant, though she and Jacob have limited ability to work during treatment; Jacob joined Kelsey in full-time real estate work about a year ago after she had spent roughly a decade in the field. The couple has received GoFundMe donations to help cover expenses in both Chicago and Cedar Hills over the coming year.
National data offer some broader context for her prognosis. According to the OPTN/SRTR 2024 Annual Data Report, U.S. lung transplant recipients overall achieved a 90.6% one-year survival rate for transplants performed in 2023, and a 60.1% five-year survival rate for transplants performed between 2017 and 2019. Separately, the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network updated national lung allocation policy in May 2026, increasing the weight given to placement efficiency in its scoring system to help reduce donor organ travel distances and delays, according to the Health Resources and Services Administration.
A Hereditary Cancer Rarely Seen in Non-Smokers
Flake's case fits a pattern researchers have documented among non-smokers diagnosed with lung cancer. A multi-state registry study co-led by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and published in JAMA Oncology found that roughly 12% of people newly diagnosed with lung cancer in the U.S. had never smoked. Federal health data updated by the CDC in May 2026 shows non-smoker lung cancer disproportionately affects women across age groups and younger adults between 20 and 49, with adenocarcinomas accounting for 60% to 80% of cases.
Flake has a hereditary cancer variant, and doctors at Huntsman Cancer Institute are researching the gene associated with her cancer. The variant is known to increase the likelihood of lung damage or cancer, and it runs deep in her family: multiple aunts and uncles have received similar diagnoses, and four of her six siblings carry the same cancer-associated variant. Huntsman Cancer Institute maintains the Utah Population Database, a research tool that links state genealogical records with medical data to identify inherited cancer genes and evaluate family risk across generations. Separately, findings from the prospective INHERIT study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology in 2023 showed that pathogenic germline mutations can cause an inherited form of lung cancer in non-smokers, sometimes producing lung nodules as early as a patient's 20s.
Flake has said the treatment appears likely to resolve her cancer, and she has encouraged people with persistent coughs or unusual lung symptoms to seek a cancer evaluation. Her case echoes other recent thoracic surgical advances tied to Northwestern Medicine, including a quadruple-organ transplant for an Iowa woman performed by Dr. Ankit Bharat's team this summer.
