Taylor’s Story
Taylor Hartzel Houlihan is a 24-year-old medical student, dancer, wife, daughter, and sister. She also happens to be a patient with Fontan circulation.
After her open-heart surgeries at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, she developed an interest in medicine and a passion for caring for others with congenital heart disease. Despite the challenges of growing up with CHD, Taylor refused to allow her condition to define her limits. She trained in classical ballet for 13 years, graduated as valedictorian from high school, and pursued the pre-medical track in college. Taylor is currently a third year medical student at Thomas Jefferson University and assists with Fontan research at CHOP. In addition to her studies, she maintains a rigorous exercise schedule reminiscent of her past ballet training. Recently, she started a social media account to share her medical journey, educate others about living as a Fontan, and offer hope to families with their own CHD stories.
If you are interested to find out more, you can follow her on Instagram or Facebook @FontanwithaFuture.
Donor Highlight: The Allen Family
When we first found out Carter was going to be born with HLHS we naturally went to the internet to find out as much information as possible on this terrifying diagnosis. That’s when we happened upon the Sisters By Heart website. There we found an abundance very helpful information and we’re able to request a care package for newly diagnosed families. This was particularly helpful as we knew nothing about the road ahead.
Carter had his Norwood and Glenn and things seemed to be going well. Shortly after his Glenn however he went into progressing heart failure and the decision was made to list him for heart transplant. He received his gift of life just before he turned 7 months old. The items in the care package and the information from both the website and Stacey were a vital part of our journey. Stacey even came and visited us in the hospital. It was incredibly helpful to talk with someone that had experienced some of what we were experiencing.
Once Carter was on the path to recovery we looked into how we could give back to the group which helped us navigate the most difficult of times.
Both of us work at Costco and our employees company wide do a United Way Foundation campaign. We looked into it and discovered we were able to select a charity of our choice for our donations to go to. We knew Sisters by heart was where we wanted to send those funds. This is a campaign Costco does every year and we continue to select SBH to receive our donations. For the past few years we have been apart of organizing a charity golf tournament with proceeds being split between SBH and another charity. Our continued support of Sisters By Heart is just our family doing a small part to help the wonderful group that guided us and supported us through our sons life threatening battle. We could never repay them but any small help we can provide will hopefully let them continue to help families of kiddos born with congenital heart defects.
