Hi all,

I’m Brittany, Allison’s younger sister. Allison was diagnosed with restrictive cardiomyopathy at the young age of 1.5. She lived with her first heart until the age of 11, when she received her first heart transplant. We are so grateful for the extra 25 years we’ve gotten to spend with my sister, we’ve celebrated countless birthdays, milestones, weddings, holidays and living daily life together as a family.

Allison’s first transplanted heart started to fail a few years ago, stents had been put in and heart function started to decline. She was officially listed on the transplant list on November 28, 2023.

We received a call December 13, 2023 (my sister would want you to know that this is Taylor Swift’s birthday) saying there was a heart available, but when the heart was taken from the donor, it was determined that the heart was not structurally sound enough. We prayed for the donor family and went home.

Saturday, January 13, 2024, A MONTH from the date of the first call, we received another call that there was a heart and to come to Boston the next morning. We got to Mass General around 8:30am January 14th. Allison went in for surgery at 3pm local time. As we got updated, we realized that this would be anything but a “routine” transplant. Her kidneys and liver were “injured” meaning there was so much trauma from the surgery and the heart could not function properly, that they had to put her on ECMO, which breathes and pumps the new heart for Allison. Allison’s chest has been left open. To say this was devastating is an understatement.

Tuesday, January 16, we were informed that the heart started to “wake up”, liver numbers started to improve (thanks be to God) but kidney numbers have not improved. Dialysis was started to try and move fluids out of her body.

Wednesday, January 17, numbers are improving but kidney numbers haven’t improved much. They’re hoping with the help of ECMO to rest her body that her kidneys start to wake up and she improves. Her heart is getting stronger day by day. She will go back down to surgery today to help clean her open chest and run some

more testing.

We are starting this GoFund Me to help our family with the costs associated with hospital living. We are staying in hotels every night, paying for parking, eating out every meal etc. Our original plan of only being here for a few weeks went out the window.

Anything that is not used for housing, food, parking, hospital living, etc. will then go directly to Allison as she recovers. She will be out of work for a while, she’ll need help with medical bills and costs of hospital visits.

We appreciate you in advance. We are also asking for prayers. If you don’t pray, send positive vibes. If you don’t do that, do something nice in memory of Allison’s donors, give blood, become an organ donor. I will update shortly. We love our prayer warriors!