Two sisters are celebrating this holiday season with gratitude, owing to a pair of successful heart transplants received at the same age, just seven years apart. NBC Chicago’s Kate Chappell reports.
Two sisters are celebrating this holiday season with gratitude, owing to a pair of successful heart transplants received at the same age, just seven years apart.
Both sisters underwent the transplants at the same hospital for the same condition, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a heart disease that causes the heart muscle to thicken.
"It means so much to be able to spend the holidays with my family," Meredith Everhart said, who will spending her first Christmas with her new heart.
Everhart spent nearly a year on the transplant waitlist before receiving a heart transplant at Northwestern Memorial Hospital at the age of 38 in January 2024, nearly seven years after her older sister underwent the procedure.
Abbey Cannon, who underwent her transplant in February 2017, described the surgery as a "miracle."
"I feel great. I own three businesses. I work probably double what full time hours are. I rarely have a bad day at all," Cannon, a mother of two, said.
HCM is a genetic disorder and the most common genetic disease of the heart. It impacts about one in five people, according to Northwestern.
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Though the disease often runs in families, only five percent of people who have it receive a transplant.
"This is a tough process to go through. Heart failure is hard, transplant is hard. All of this is psychologically hard, physically hard," Dr. Esther Vorovich, an advanced heart failure and transplant specialist at Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute, said.
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Vorovich treated both Everhart and Cannon and is an advocate for organ donation.
"The number one thing limiting organ transplantation is donor supply," Vorovich said. "The one holiday message through all of this is we should all be organ donors. Organ donation is a gift."
Everhart and Cannon are celebrating their gifts, grateful for a second chance at life, together.
"She was the only person that got me," Everhart said. "She's my sister/ I was able to cry when I felt so vulnerable when other people didn’t understand."
"I am extremely blessed," Everhart said.
