I received my new heart, my second chance at life, in January 2018. Once I recovered, I knew that I wanted to give back in some way to the transplant community that has helped me so much. I began volunteering with Donor Network West, my local Organ Procurement Organization and found a niche that I could fill there in educating the public about the benefits of organ donation and transplant. But it wasn’t until September of 2019 that I found a way to help that was desperately needed, unfilled by anyone else, and possibly could save lives and certainly could improve recovery after a heart transplant. I learned of a patient whose transplant was being delayed due to his inability to pay for the post-transplant temporary recovery housing near the hospital that his doctors would require for at least a month. This is unaffordably expensive for many families after a transplant in a San Francisco Bay Area hospital. I knew that something as solvable as money shouldn’t delay someone’s second chance at life, especially since I knew that many people die while waiting for a matching organ. I enlisted friends and hosted a fundraiser in my own backyard raising $12,000 to help him. Later, a father told me that his daughter recovered from her heart transplant in their car because he couldn’t afford recovery lodging in the same area. I myself quickly qualified for the lifesaving procedure and I benefitted from recovering in private lodging, instead of a communal environment, when I was weak and highly immune suppressed to prevent my body from rejecting my new heart. I want others to have the same experiences. I wondered how financially challenged patients could have the same. That is why in early 2020 I formed Heartfelt Help Foundation. I’m so grateful for my second chance and feel obligated to make it count in ways that give back to the transplant community – that no one asks to be a member of, but all of us appreciate.
Read more about Denise’s story here.