By Jonathan Raymond
(RNN) – A fundraising campaign for a woman in Michigan who was told she needed to come up with $10,000 just to get on a heart transplant list raised more than enough money in just two days.
Alex Britt created the GoFundMe campaign for his mother, Hedda Martin.
He posted a letter from the hospital informing her that she was “not a candidate at this time for a heart transplant due to needing more secure financial planning for immunosuppressive medication coverage.”
A committee that assesses heart transplant candidates, the letter said, was recommending she raise $10,000.
“Mom is a young 60 and has at least 20 more years of life in her … if she can get a new heart,” Britt wrote on GoFundMe. “The transplant team does not want to ‘waste’ a vital organ if she cannot afford heart rejection drugs.”
She herself posted to the GoFundMe page, writing: “It was devastating that the hospital chose to require basically a ‘down payment’ for the offering of being putting on the transplant list.”
As of Monday evening, the campaign had raised nearly $30,000 just since Saturday.
It spread across social media, including Twitter, where the likes of incoming Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, took note of it. Her tweet showing the letter Martin received got 28,000 retweets and 71,000 likes.
According to the Detroit Free Press, Martin wrote on Facebook on Monday that she could now meet again with the transplant committee to be reevaluated, potentially sometime even this week.
Britt’s GoFundMe post said Martin has congestive heart failure, a result of the chemotherapy she underwent for breast cancer more than a decade ago.
In September, he wrote, her condition deteriorated. She was put on Milrinone, a drug that can help patients with severe congestive heart failure for a short time.
Britt said the committee wouldn’t even put her on the transplant list and then give her time to raise the funds. She had to have the money immediately.
Now, she does.
"My heart goes out to all of you with the deepest of love and thanks," Martin wrote on Facebook, according to the Free Press. "The outpouring of support, even though it ended up becoming very political, I appreciate so very much."
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