Katherine
Katherine
From dancing and color guard to a full-time chef.
Music and performance have long been a part of Katherine’s life. At just three years old, she began dancing, and then in elementary and middle school, she participated in the band. This ultimately led her to her passion for color guard in middle and high school.
Katherine has hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS), and since she was about 10 years old, she has been invested in learning more about her condition to better understand it and help herself age happily and healthily. Living with Fontan circulation, Katherine still participated in the things she loved, like dance, performance and music, but not without difficulties or hardship.
Like many patients living with Fontan circulation, Katherine and her family moved around when she was a child to ensure she had access to the best care and participated in several clinical trials, including FUEL-1. Katherine likes participating in clinical trials because as a member of the Fontan community, she wants to help grow the research and new medicines and, in her own words, feels passionately that “if there’s a possibility of personal benefit for me, or for others in my community, why not give it a shot?”
As she got older, Katherine learned a great deal from her uncle, who was a chef and restaurant owner. He inspired her as a restaurateur and taught her so much while working in his food trucks. In addition to her dance performance skills, she has gone on to become a successful chef and dreams of running her own kitchen and restaurant one day.
To Katherine, a treatment option for Fontan circulation would mean returning to dancing without a care in the world and feeling like she can finally breathe more easily, like everyone else. For her future aspirations, a treatment would help empower her career growth as a chef.
Although she may look like the average young adult to everyone else, she feels like anything but average. As a Face of Fontan, she hopes to show how different every patient with Fontan circulation is, including their unique circumstances growing up and how they learn to pursue their dreams while grappling with a condition that is often invisible to others.
