The Salstrom Family

Meet the Salstroms!

“I’m the oldest of 5 kids. Three of us have the gene. I’m from Fort Worth, Tx. (Cameron is from Houston) I found out my dad had HD when I was 19. (He died in the summer of 2018 from complications of HD, but he hadn’t recognized anyone but my mom for years. He passed away at the age of 61.)

I got tested and was positive for HD. I had my tubes tied at 24 when I lived in Austin going to school. I had always loved kids and had been a nanny for many years and always wanted lots of kids, but I decided it would be selfish to do it the traditional way, knowing what I did about HD.

I graduated from Texas state university in 2012 and met Cameron during my first year of teaching. I went on to get my masters from Lamar university spring of 2019. Cameron and I have been married for five years, and we have a dog named Bailey.

Since I’m a teacher and Cameron works for the airline, we couldn’t afford to do IVF, so we had decided we might adopt, but we’re leaning towards not having kids because of this.
I saw the info about the grant on Facebook, and we decided to apply. Two days after we sat down and had a heart-to-heart about honestly choosing not to have kids, we got the email about being accepted by the foundation in September 2019.

In October, we met with Dr. Roach in Houston, did egg retrieval and PGT testing in November, and our first round of IVF in January, but it didn’t take. So we did the next round in March and got Jackson!”

- Rachel Salstrom