Heartfelt Gratitude: A Daughter’s Love
As we welcome the holiday season, I cannot help but reflect on a year of heartfelt impact here at Harboring Hearts.
Through our Emergency Fund, we've served 420 patients and their families to date in 2023. Through our Community Events, we've reached over 500 participants via our programming.
These resources are tangible and look different for every family we serve:
A multi-night hotel stay for family members of a patient undergoing a life-saving transplant
A grocery store gift card to fill a family’s pantry when a loved one is recovering from surgery and out of work
An Uber gift card to safely travel to and from post operative doctor’s appointments
Therapeutic chair yoga for patients who have been in a hospital bed for weeks on end
Joy given to a patient and their loved ones from care packages, handmade by one of our corporate partners
A sense of community and the ability to exhale in the midst of uncertainty
We’ve offered this patient-facing support since 2009 when Michelle Javian and Yuki Kotani-Courtland founded Harboring Hearts in honor of their fathers.
Thanks to the unwavering support from our donors and key funders like the LiveOnNY Foundation and Hearts for Russ, we’re offering more of these resources than ever before to cardiac surgery and organ transplant families.
Team Harboring Hearts from left to right: Nikkya Hargrove, Aradhna Bulchand-Ashrani, Nicole Zero, Pamela Kass, and Herbert Norat
Our programs are delivered in collaboration with social workers at our 9 partner hospitals: NYP/Columbia University Medical Center, NYP/Weill Cornell Medical Center, NYP/Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital, The Mount Sinai Hospital, Montefiore Medical Center, Westchester Medical Center, NYU, Northwell/North Shore University Hospital, and Stony Brook University Hospital.
When you think of our families, given your experience with your dad, what comes to mind for you?
Simply put, gratitude! Gratitude for the gift of life and our team’s ability to meet families in their greatest times of need.
In 2016, my father, Dave, received a successful heart transplant. Our family is indebted to his transplant team –– Dr. Patel, Dr. Daneshmand, Dr. Milano, and the other gifted hands of the cardiac transplant team at Duke University Hospital –– for my father’s second chance at life.
I still remember the moment our family got the call that a heart became available. My father had been in the ICU for several weeks as his health was rapidly deteriorating. His ejection fraction –– the amount of blood that the heart pumps each time it beats –– was below 15% (normal, healthy function is around 70%). The pacemaker defibrillator in his chest and balloon pump in his shoulder were no longer sufficient.
He was on the A1 list for transplant and the cardiac ICU team recommended we pursue an LVAD –– a left ventricular assist device is a pump used for patients who have reached end-stage heart failure. It was the next suitable step for a patient in his condition. An LVAD, serving as a bridge to transplant, would require an 8 hour surgery followed by approximately six months of recovery, then he would be put back on the transplant waiting list. My dad is a former quarterback at every level. It wasn’t the easiest feat to find an organ donor of his size and stature. Our family spoke at length in his ICU room as my mom, Julie, rubbed his back and my brothers, Rob and Brian, squeezed his hands.
We decided to pursue the LVAD surgery. The operating room was reserved for 6 am on a Saturday. We hoped for a miracle. A miracle was what we got! 20 minutes from Duke University Hospital, my siblings and I were asleep in our childhood home when my mom got the life-changing phone call. 4 am, two hours before my dad’s scheduled LVAD surgery, a heart became available and they were preparing him for transplant. This was the call and answered prayer we had been waiting for...
Approximately 10 hours in surgery and less than 10 days post-op, my dad was home. A new heart and a new lease on life. While he’s had to fight hard through various medication changes and life looking different post organ transplant, my dad celebrated seven years with his new heart this past August and is in the 99% of recovered heart transplant recipients in the state of North Carolina, according to his medical team at Duke. This is a gift we are grateful for each and every day. When he’s chasing my nieces and nephews around the house at Christmastime and when he walks me down the aisle on my wedding day in a few months, I will hold his donor in my heart and quietly thank them for choosing to give the gift of life.
Pictured Left to Right: Dave Kass, heart transplant recipient, and Pamela Kass
In thinking about the 400+ families Harboring Hearts has served this year, support from loved ones throughout recovery is crucial. My family was able to access the hospital at a moment’s notice. We had all of the immediate resources we needed when my dad was hospitalized. So many of the families we serve at Harboring Hearts travel to New York from all corners of the country and internationally for world-class operative care. As a result, family members are often sleeping in waiting rooms, living paycheck to paycheck to pay for medical expenses, and shouldering the burden of a family member losing their income due to hospitalization. That’s when Harboring Hearts steps in to offer our support.
As we look ahead to 2024, what's ahead for Harboring Hearts?
We’re overjoyed to serve families when they need it most. Our team at Harboring Hearts approaches support of patients and their families similarly to how physicians approach care.
Our commitment to patients and their families in 2024 and beyond:
Meet the requests of as many patients and their families as possible, removing barriers for success.
When a family does not have to worry about the immediate needs and expenses associated with hospitalization, they are given the freedom to rest and focus on what’s most important: their health and recovery.
Serve patients and their families who are at the greatest financial risk.
We are committed to serving under-resourced patients and their families. We can serve a patient from New York State, another state, or another country – so long as the cardiac surgery or transplant patient is being seen at one of our 9 hospital partners and is deemed low income.
Support a patient in their ongoing recovery.
Post operative recovery is not always linear. Whether a patient is dealing with a prolonged hospital stay, bouts of organ rejection post transplant, follow up surgery, or another complication, Harboring Hearts can offer financial assistance to a family more than once.
This is helpful as families strive for stability and independence.
Give Hope This Holiday Season: https://www.harboringhearts.org
What about our donors gives you hope?
Our donors' generosity gives me hope. We acknowledge there are many worthy organizations to support in New York, nationally, and across the globe. Year after year, our donors show up to support families they may never meet, but whose lives will be improved by their kindness.
Giving Tuesday, a global day of generosity, is Tuesday, November 28th! To make a tax deductible gift, please visit our website. You may also send a check to our team below.
Harboring Hearts
P.O. Box 2674
New York, NY 10163
In our pursuit of giving hope to hearts, we are committed to serving cardiac surgery as well as cardiac, liver, and pediatric transplant families during their greatest time of need. Give generously and your gift will provide hope and direct resources to families across our 9 hospital partners.
Together, we’ll give hope to hearts everywhere!