Team McCarty LVNC Heart Strong

We are reaching out to help our dear friend, James McCarty, and his sweet family while they wait for James to get a heart transplant. This GoFundMe fundraiser is meant to help them with any financial needs they might be encountering during this stressful time. They also have a GiveInKind page for anyone interested in helping with meals and/or gift cards for food. Please keep them in your thoughts and prayers! See James' post below explaining what he has been going through for the past year...

"As most of you know, last July I was diagnosed with a rare heart issued called "Left Ventricular Non-Compaction". This is a structural deformity to the left ventricle of my heard. This issue does not allow my heart to pump at full capacity. This has caused my heart to become enlarged, my heart function to drop to 20% and there is significant scaring. We knew these issues were not repairable, but could be managed, for some time, on medications. I also had a defibrillator implanted at the end of Oct.

All was going well unit March of 2021. At this time I just started to not feel well and not feel like myself. My cardiologist ordered a few more tests and it was decided that I needed to go thru the heart transplant evaluation process. This occurred in June of this year. The result of the evaluation told us that I was a good candidate, but I was not quite sick enough.

My doctors continued to monitor me very closely, watching for the first sign that my health was getting worse. Well, that happened this week. On Tuesday night/Wednesday morning I was shocked 3 times over about 1.5 hours. My implanted defibrillator shocked me out of the 3 separate cases of ventricular tachycardia. Most of the time this type of arrhythmia is lethal. Luckily for me, my device did what it was intended to do.

Emily Fuchs McCarty drove me the KU med and I was admitted to the cardiac ICU. I met with my team and it was decided that the "tachycardia storm" that I would be eligible to be listed for a transplant. In a 24 hour time frame the transplant team updated my transplant application, held and emergency transplant committee meeting, got buyoff from insurance and was able to get me listed as a status 2. This is the highest level you can be listed at with out being on life support.

I will be in the hospital until I received a perfect match. We are told this timeframe could be from 1 week to months. We are all hoping that I will be on the shorter end of this timeframe.

We have received a ton of offers for meals, groceries gift cards etc... that we do know even know how to handle it. We have set up a "Give In Kind" website. This allows people to buy gift cards, set up a time to bring dinner etc.." Please do not feel like you have to help out, but if you do feel so inclined, please use the link below.

I will do my best to respond to message, but I may not get to everyone. Please know that we are vey thankful!"