Peter Morrison

Peter Morrison is someone who has a life story of overcoming obstacles. Born with radial club arms, he was determined to show the world he could do anything, and so became an artist, working with the difficult medium of metal. So it was no surpise to those who knew him that when he suffered from heart failure at an early age of around 50 he kept going for a long time afterwards before getting to this point. But the cardiologists are amazed at how long he’s managed to live with his current heart in the shape he was in, and how he was still moving and going when his heart was only pumping through 10% of how much blood a heart usually can. In 2024, Peter’s heart got to the point where it couldn’t keep going, however. At first it just looked like decreased energy, but when he went into the hospital they knew it was his heart and they changed his medicines and he kept going, but after the third time in the hospital, he finally went to the advanced heart failure center at Massachusetts General Hospital, which is one of the best in cardiac care. After two weeks of numerous tests, they decided the best course of action for Peter was to get an artifiicial heart pump — the LVAD. Peter wasn’t eligible for transplant because his heart was too weak, essentially, but after some time on the LVAD they may put him on the transplant list. So Peter went through the LVAD surgery at the beginning of March 2025.

The LVAD surgery went well, and Peter recovered quickly. The LVAD gave Peter a new lease on life, but it also came with its challenges. LVAD-owners can’t swim or take baths, or go through the metal detector at the airport. They carry a battery pack with them wherever they go, and an emergency kit whenever going far. They need to change their batteries to the LVAD or plug it into the wall every 15 hours. For the first couple of months Peter couldn’t drive, and for even longer some things around the house from laundry to lawn were challenges we were still overcoming. Peter approaching all this with humor and cyborg jokes, as you might expect.

It wasn’t long, however, before Peter became transplant-eligible. We thought that might happen as early as June, when they said it could progress, but it took until early October for him to actually get on the list. But it was only a month and a half later that we got the call — they had a donor heart for Peter! He went through heart transplant surgery in on the night of November 12-13, 2025, and it was very successful. He’s recovering well. Heart transplants come with their own list of dos and don’ts — he has to be careful with food safety in ways similar to the precautions pregnant women have, and similarly can’t touch used kitty litter.

We’re raising funds to cover the medical expenses related to the LVAD, transplant, and the care inbetween, beyond what is covered by insurance. Our out-of-pocket amount reached our maximum of $6500 in 2025, but we also had some similar expenses from hospitalizations in 2024. We have also made and are making still some changes to our household that will make it more sustainable for us. Peter has been the one in the household that does the heavy lifting and things that are hard on Cindy’s back, so we’re looking to put in place first-floor laundry to avoid the stairs more, and we have put in place some robotic helpers such as robot kitty litter boxes and a robot vacuum (insert more cybog jokes here).

Our total for pre-transplant 2025 medical and household expenses was around $8500 so far, and $3000 for 2024 medical expenses. The main household expense still to come is the largest, the adding first-floor laundry, which may cost around $7000.

The latest edition to our financial story is that our basement has mold, and mold is dangerous to transplant patients, so Peter can’t come home until it’s dealt with. This adds another $13,000 to the cost of this journey.

We’ve chosen Help Hope Live as a crowd-funding platform because it is a nonprofit organization where donations are tax deductible for contributors and will only be used to cover medical and related expenses.