A Christmas Wish Of Gold Heidi's Heart

The Mum’s Got A Special Message To Her Donor’s Kind Family

- Julie Jacobson

Heidi Harty-Eugster reckons she’s been given the best Christmas present ever – life.

The Christchurch mum, 38, was born with hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy (HOC), a degenerative disease where the heart muscle becomes abnormally thick, making it hard for the heart to pump blood.

HOC often goes undiagnosed because many people with the disease have no significant problems and few, if any, symptoms. For others, it can result in life-threatening abnormal heart rhythms.

Heidi was one of the latter. The condition also affected her grandmother, her father Hans, his sister and a cousin.

Her grandmother was in her early 50s when she passed away, and her dad had successful open-heart surgery in his 30s, carried out by pioneering surgeon Sir Brian Barrett-Boyes, and lived into his 70s.

Heidi’s mum Deborah first noticed something was wrong when Heidi was six weeks old – her lips were blue and she wasn’t feeding properly. She had her first open-heart surgery aged 10.

In the intervening years, Heidi tried to live life as normal as possible. She took up synchronised swimming, a physically demanding sport for a healthy youngster, let alone one with a heart condition.

At 17, while on a waiting list for another operation and against her surgeon’s advice, she moved to Australia, getting a job in retail. For eight months, everything was fine, then it wasn’t. “I was so ill, I couldn’t walk to the toilet,” she tells.

Heidi flew home and had another myectomy to remove some of the thickened heart muscle. She bought a house, worked two jobs and biked everywhere. Then one day, as she was cycling to work past Christchurch Hospital, she went into cardiac arrest.