It's been over 475 days and it's almost time for Kate to get her new heart as she starts a new chapter in her transplant journey! While health insurance will cover most of the procedure costs, there are some upfront costs that will fall on Kate and her partner, Justin. Justin will be her primary caregiver, which requires him to take a minimum of 3 months of unpaid leave from work. Please join their friends as they help to raise financial assistance for expenditures such as food, housing costs, co-pays, deductibles, and other out-of-pocket costs during this incredibly dynamic time.

Please see Kate's detailed and compelling story below.

After over 15 months of being listed for a heart transplant at Christ Hospital in Cincinnati,

Ohio, Kate and her long-term partner & caretaker Justin are having to make a big move

in her care by transferring her transplant listing to Vanderbilt Medical Center in

Nashville, Tennessee. This is a medically necessary move, as over the past year Kate's

health has declined severely due to being in end‐stage Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy

(HCM) induced chronic heart failure. She is only 35 and has been in heart failure since

two failed open heart surgeries at the age of 20—and had avoided the transplant list for nearly 14 years.

This decision does not come easy, as they have become very close with the team at

Christ and have grown to trust this team. However, after so much time and a significant

decline in Kate's physical condition, Kate needs a heart transplant as soon as possible,

and unfortunately it looks less and less likely to happen with the program at Christ. Her

team is recommending she move her listing to Vanderbilt because her body is getting

weaker, and as she grows weaker she inches closer to becoming too weak to receive

this life-saving treatment for her debilitating HCM. And Vanderbilt is assuring them that they will be doing everything to get her transplanted as quickly as possible.

Vanderbilt is three hours from their home in Lexington, Kentucky, which presents a lot of

challenges. In particular, it requires Kate and Justin to spend a minimum of six weeks

post‐transplant in the Nashville area for the many appointments and procedures

necessary to ensure her newly transplanted heart is healthy and accepted, along with

adjusting to the new lifelong immunosuppressant medication.

At this point, Kate has spent so much time on the transplant list at Christ Hospital,

attending multiple monthly appointments and having numerous bi‐monthly procedures. Justin, the sole breadwinner the household, has used up all of his banked PTO to support her throughout this time. While his employer is being gracious enough to work with him during this uncertain time and keep him employed, the entirety of the 6+ weeks in Nashville will be unpaid. This is a major stressor: on top of the additional medical bills that come with her care in Nashville, they still have to cover the rent and utilities for their home in Lexington, as well as all of their normal bills. This is where the bulk of money that we are raising is going: to help cover Justin's income for three months, giving them as much financial stability as possible and making sure Kate continues to have her primary caretaker by her side throughout the transplant and post-transplant process.

Additionally, Kate is in desperate need of physical therapy: because of her end-stage

HCM-induced heart failure, she is not able to move around as much as she once did,

putting her at risk of becoming too weak to receive a heart transplant. It’s critical that

she continue to maintain the muscle mass her body needs to stay on the transplant

list—but unfortunately her insurance refuses to cover this aspect of her treatment. An

additional portion of this fundraiser will help Kate and Justin pay for PT out-of-pocket

both before and after receiving her transplant. Kate has a goal to be active and as

athletic as possible post‐transplant, and rebuilding muscle mass is going to be a big part of that recovery process!

A bit about Kate and her HCM journey: Kate was diagnosed with HCM when she was 4,

as a part of an NIH study researching the genetics of the disease. Her family is full of

HCM cases, including two heart transplants, and sadly her father passed away from

sudden cardiac arrest at the age of 43 from the condition. After becoming more

symptomatic in her mid-teen years, her HCM started to become debilitating halfway

through her freshman year of college.

Despite two septal myectomies and an alcohol septal ablation, Kate remained in severe

heart failure. The Mayo Clinic, where she had her second myectomy, offered to place

her on the transplant list in 2013 if she moved to Minnesota. But she met Justin. And

stayed in Kentucky. During the next decade, she cycled through various heart issues but

continued to live life as best she could. She became deeply involved with all things

dogs—showing, breeding, sports, and some greyhound rescue for good measure—and

grew her passion for quilting and cross stitching.

In the fall of 2023, things started to take a real turn for the first time since Kate was 20

as her body began struggling with chronic low blood pressure. Though we hoped that

we could continue to delay her need for a heart transplant, in March 2024, a routine

echocardiogram showed that it was time to get listed for transplant. Since then, she has

tried her best to be as healthy as possible since being listed in June 2024. A month into

being listed as a status 4, Kate had one dry run (an official offer of a heart), but since

then, there have been only 10 provisional yes offers in Cincinnati, a much lower number

than her team expected.

Following her most recent hospitalization, when once again she was unable to be

up-listed to a higher status on the transplant list, it was decided by all involved that

transferring her wait time to Vanderbilt was the most advantageous, given her current

symptoms and family history. Vanderbilt has some of the best resources in the world

when it comes to heart transplantation and a significantly shorter average wait time.

Transferring her wait time gives her the best advantage possible to get a heart quickly

and with a high-quality team of providers that know heart transplantation inside and out.

She had been doing so well until this past summer, particularly continuing to stay active with her church in Lexington and its quilt ministry. But like many

end-stage HCM patients, it seems like she is reaching the cliff’s edge. Her symptoms have started to truly dictate her life more than ever, and she has gotten to the point that walking across the house and eating are exhausting daily struggles.

This transplant will be truly life-changing for her. The daily chest pain that she has dealt

with her entire life continues to escalate. She doesn't know what it’s like to walk up

stairs without struggling to breathe. She has remained dependent on a pacemaker to keep her heart beating for over 15 years now. While a transplant was always in the cards for Kate, she always thought she still had a little more time before it became her reality.

When she was originally listed, they told her that, given her size and type-O blood, the

wait would likely be anywhere from nine months to a year. None of that was worked out

as doctors had hoped. But Vanderbilt offers her the best possible chance of getting to

the other side of this fight as healthy as possible, and every little bit will help this small

family of two, and their four hounds, get there.