- Slug: Sports-Heart Transplant Scars, 3,100 words.
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By Jake Santo
Cronkite News
PHOENIX – As she lay on the floor of the volleyball court, strangers pressing paddles against her chest and the color dissipating from her face, Olivia Eisenhauer fought for her life.
An eighth-grade student at the time, she was walking off the court of a summer volleyball competition in Shawnee, Kansas, when she suddenly and violently collapsed to the ground. As concerned onlookers and her parents stood beside her, they first believed it was nothing but a minor injury suffered from the normal grind of sport.
“We thought it might be dehydration or something. It’s the middle of summer,” said Rod Eisenhauer, Olivia’s father. “She wouldn’t come to, so immediately it became more of a serious situation.”
As Olivia’s lifeless body lay incapacitated, the rhythm of her life came to a screeching hault.
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More than 600 miles away, in Greeley, Colorado, Connor Gillmore was forging a life for himself. A great kid with a huge heart, his parents would say, he would always offer to help out someone in need. The oldest of four children, Connor was in high school discovering his passion.
Cars.
It derived from building sets for his school’s musicals and plays. He was the type to always tinker, whether it was to construct a basic Lego set or to work on one of his many cars. He did not mind spending long hours working on the several cars he owned, and enjoyed the work before taking them out for a drive in the Colorado mountains.
“He was also more about the eight weeks prior to the trip, getting the ‘crawler’ ready than the four or five hours that they were up in the mountains and off-roading,” his father, Travis, said. “His goal was to beat the crap out of it while he was up there and then bring it back down and work on and make it better. It was all about more the journey then the endgame.”
Four years later, his journey would collide with Eisenhauer’s on Dec. 3, 2018.
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That’s the day 16-year-old Eisenhauer received a new heart. It belonged to Gillmore, who was 22 and had suffered a horrific accident while off-roading with friends.
As fate would have it – and fate reared its head in the strangest of ways with these two – Olivia was at Children’s Mercy Hospital Kansas in Kansas City for a routine check-up when she learned that after a long wait, a heart was available to her.
Gillmore’s.
“It was interesting because Olivia was in the hospital room when the doctors came in, and Jodi had just gone down to the hospital cafeteria,” Rod said about his wife. “I had gone home to shower and then went to my office to pick something up. Olivia was alone in the room when the doctors actually came in and told her that they had a donor. … The doctor told us later that he actually had four heart offers within 24 hours. We had waited for two years, then all of a sudden we had four heart offers.”
Two years, then suddenly four donors. Not only that. But Eisenhauser later learned that many of Gillmore’s family members were fans of Kansas State, a rival of her beloved Kansas Jayhawks.
Fate.
“She’s not our child, yet I view her a little bit as being part of our family,” Travis said. “She’s got part of us with her. And she always will.”
And she will always have the scar. It snakes up her chest and stops just below her neck. She doesn’t care and in fact wears it as a kind of badge of honor, despite once being told she shouldn’t pursue sports broadcast journalism because of it. Now, 18, the student at Arizona State’s Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication is more than ever determined to stiff-arm an industry that has had little room for imperfections when it comes to women.
“Anyone who is an authority figure who tries to limit a person because of his or her scars needs a crash course in humanity,” Kim Jones said. “ All of us have scars. Some of ours are just more visible.”
Jones would know. In 2018 while covering a Washington Football Team practice, the NFL Network reporter suffered an aortic dissection. She underwent emergency surgery and has the scar to prove it.
A scary moment
The first sign that life was taking an unexpected turn for Olivia was at the volleyball tournament at Okun Fieldhouse in Shawnee. Just 12, she had suffered a significant cardiac arrest. As her heart stopped beating, parents who were also nurses rushed to the young girl’s side, performing CPR with frantic urgency. The nurses continued conducting rapid chest compressions, thrusting their hands against Olivia’s chest for several minutes, with no success of resuscitation. As the situation appeared bleaker with each continued tick of the clock, the Eisenhauer’s miracle appeared in the form of a small medical device.
“Somebody found and yelled for a defibrillator,” said Jodi Eisenhauer, Olivia’s mother. “They came running over and said, ‘We’ve got to use this defibrillator now.’ She was gray. She was gray. We later found out that we had seconds.”
The AED device shocked her body, allowing electricity to pulse through her heart, resetting it to a proper beat. Life once again began flowing through the veins of the young, middle school girl.
She was rushed to Overland Park Regional Medical Center just outside of Kansas City. As Olivia rode in the ambulance, her parents and family were uncertain about the prospect of life. Jodi remembers the clattering of noises and beeping of medical devices striking her ears from the back of the ambulance.
“I’ve never heard sounds like that in the back of that truck,” Jodi said. “I think that was the hardest of all of it.”
Olivia was placed in a medically induced coma for two and a half days as doctors tried to determine her condition. As she came to from her coma, confusion overcame her.
“I remember just waking up because I had the breathing tube in and they were starting to take me out of a coma and just being like what is going on,” Olivia said. “I asked for a whiteboard and a pen to start writing. My mom saved a bunch of pictures of what I was asking but that was just like sheer panic. I had nurses holding me down, but then my mom saying you can’t speak right now.”
Olivia’s condition improved during her time in the hospital, but doctors were still perplexed as to what had happened to her. Unable to diagnose her definitively, she was released after 11 days of observation. The root cause of Olivia’s cardiac episode still had not been determined and the long, arduous journey had just begun for the Eisenhauser family.
Two years passed. Dozens of doctor’s appointments later and a second cardiac episode at age 14 still did not provide the Eisenhauers with an answer. After traveling to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, Olivia underwent a five-hour cardiac catheterization to view her heart and its activity level. This procedure finally produced the answers the family had been seeking.
Olivia was diagnosed with restrictive cardiomyopathy, a condition that affects the oxygen levels and viability of her heart.
“The top half of my heart was perfectly fine, but the bottom half of the muscle was incredibly tense and I needed double the oxygen for it,” Olivia said. “I could barely walk up steps without borderline passing out because I would just get winded.”
The family soon learned that “the only choice was to do a heart transplant,” her doctor, Aliessa Barnes, director of cardiac transplantation at Children’s Mercy Kansas City, said in a video for the American Heart Association.
The waiting game was afoot for the Eisenhauer family, waiting for that call, praying she would receive the new heart in time. While going through the trials and tribulations of waiting for that phone call, Olivia’s lifestyle was dramatically altered.
“I was going from playing volleyball at least two hours a day, five out of seven days a week, to being told, ’That really can kill you,’” Olivia said. “‘Your life could end if you step on the volleyball court again.’”
The mental toll on Olivia was at times noticeable, but she credits her family, friends and faith while waiting for the transplant. Knowing she would not have the ability to play sports until she received a new heart, Olivia started investigating the world of sports broadcasting and journalism.
“I really started to watch sports and the X’s and O’s,” Olivia said. “I couldn’t play, and that was incredibly difficult. It was just a total lifestyle change. In hindsight, I’m thankful for that side of it. Because like the saying, one door closes, another opens.”
After almost two years of waiting, Olivia was at Children’s Mercy Hospital Kansas for a check-up when news came. During most times during her health journey, both of Olivia’s parents had been in the room with her. At this pivotal moment, Jodi and Rod were not when Olivia received the news that would change her future.
After a 10-hour operation at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Olivia had a perfect, beating heart in place. She was given a second lease on life, cured of the endless trepidation and angst that consumed the years since her first cardiac arrest.
But she was conflicted. She feels a sense of relief knowing her operation was a success, that she had been given a chance to live the life she always believed she was meant to have. She also understood the gravity that someone had to lose a life in order for her to receive a new heart.
A tragic turn
For members of the Gillmore family, one of the Eisenhauers’ best days will be remembered as one of their worst.
Jennifer and Travis, along with their two youngest sons, were traveling to Chicago to visit Jennifer’s family for her birthday celebration. The Gillmore family included time to attend a collegiate men’s basketball game in Milwaukee between Marquette and Kansas State, Jennifer’s and Travis’ alma maters, respectively. The couple described the weekend as an entertaining excursion, visiting Jennifer’s family and meeting with old friends they had not seen recently.
Then Jennifer received a phone call that would change her life forever.
Their oldest son, Connor, had been in an accident.
“They basically said that he’d come in unresponsive, which I’m not really sure what that means exactly but you know it’s serious,” Travis said.
The Gillmores packed their bags and headed for Colorado immediately, calling family and friends for status updates of what was taking place with their son. They faced blizzard-like conditions pounding against the side of their vehicle on their way to the airport, unsure of what they would find when they returned home. Both Travis and Jennifer remember one distinct moment from that drive that still resonates.
“One of the things we vividly remember is that I had been talking to a doctor, I have no idea who he is, in the middle of a storm, construction, traffic, hearing these words, ‘Your son has suffered non-survival injuries,’” Travis said.
Less than a mile away from the Gillmore’s home, tragedy struck. Connor’s vehicle had flipped 180 degrees. Authorities were on the scene almost immediately, finding Connor suffering from a full displacement of the skull with massive internal blood hemorrhaging. He was not wearing his seatbelt when he was involved in the accident. Other than the damage to his brain, Connor’s condition was otherwise normal with no significant injuries to any of his major organs.
When the family arrived at North Colorado Medical Center late that same night, the hospital was inundated with members of their community. As more information began to flow to the Gillmore family, the prospect of recovery grew dimmer as a grim reality set in. As Connor lay in the hospital, machines attached to multiple points on his body, doctors discussed the possible steps moving forward. Multiple tests searching for any sign of life were conducted over two days before Connor was declared braindead by the medical team.
Initially, organ donation was a subject the family was not willing to speak about after Connor’s accident.
“At the hospital, I think that night they mentioned organ donation and they had not even declared him braindead or anything like that, but I couldn’t even speak about that,” Jennifer said.
As time passed and Connor’s condition failed to improve, the Gillmore family began to think about the prospect of organ donation. To the family’s surprise, Connor had already registered as an organ donor based on information from his driver’s license.
“I’ve come to the conclusion (remembering) that Connor was involved in another rollover accident while he was four-wheeling,” Jennifer said. “It resulted in 22 stitches in his forehead. He had a classmate, who was a live organ donor to somebody who had worked at their school, and she had donated a kidney at the age of 21. That happened right around the time of his first rollover. I honestly think that’s what made him check the box because of his friend.”
Helping others
The decision had been made to allow an organ donation to take place with Connor. The Gillmore family knew Connor would ultimately be helping even more people in his final moments of life. Jennifer and Travis wheeled Connor into surgery, said their final goodbyes to their son as they kissed his forehead.
Connor Gillmore was ultimately entering the operating room, helping people, like he had always done during his life. This time he was helping save the lives of people he would never meet.
For the Gillmore and Eisenhauer families, the most unlikely of circumstances had brought these two families together. Due to restrictions from the organ donation organizations, they were unable to contact each other for over a year, policies are put in place to protect the families of transplant recipients and transplant givers.
“You have to wait until a year out from your transplant to have any communication,” Olivia said. “I had no idea where my heart came from, no clue about anything. That’s just out of privacy for their family and for mine, as well.”
“We have received other letters,” Jennifer said. “The letter we always hoped for was from the heart recipient. We knew the ages. We knew it was going to a 16-year-old girl in Kansas City.”
After the initial one-year waiting period, the Gillmore and Eisenhauer families sent letters to one another. The families had been unable to meet in person due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, but communicated several times over video conferencing and emails. The families are now connected on social media, speaking on a regular basis.
They met for the first time in August and then again several weeks ago, when both Travis and Jennifer traveled to Arizona. They brought a stethoscope to listen to their son’s heart as it beat in Olivia’s chest. Ultimately, the connection resonated with both Olivia and the Gillmore family, knowing that Connor still has a piece in this world still beating of life.
Olivia has used her health battle to assist others going through similar situations while improving community awareness with organ donation. She used her voice to speak at the American Heart Association’s Heart Ball this past February. In addition to Olivia’s advocacy, the Gillmore family has rallied around organ donation awareness as a tribute to Connor and his sacrifice.
After Olivia graduated from high school, she went to Arizona State where she is a freshman pursuing a dual major in Meteorology and Sports Journalism. It is her dream school, so much so that when she was scheduled to take a tour of the campus, she pulled her name off the heart transplant list – to qualify, a potential recipient needs to be within two hours of the hospital – so could make the trip.
Her career pursuit wasn’t embraced by everyone. While attending a journalism conference in San Francisco, a professor told her the scar would be too distracting and she would not find a job within the industry.
Jones knows all too well the gravity of what a heart condition can do to one’s life. She almost died after collapsing prior to going live on camera. Doctors were able to save her life, but in the process were forced to create a noticeable scar.
“I remember when I was in the hospital and met one of my surgeons (Dr. Alan Speir) for the first time. He said, ‘I know what you do for a living. I’m sorry about the scars,’” Jone said. “At that point, I hadn’t seen my scars yet. But I told him: ‘Don’t apologize. My scars are who I am now.’ When I first saw my scars, I realized how close I had been to death.
“Over the last two-plus years, strangers have thanked me for not being afraid to show my scars. So many other people have them, too.”
Millie Eisenhauer, Olivia’s younger sister, credits Olivia’s personal growth to her continued positivity in the face of all the uncertainty with her health. Olivia’s life experiences have trickled down to how her younger sister looks at each day.
“This whole experience is more like ‘you only live once’ and I need to go out and live my life,” Millie said. “Follow my dreams. I really feel like that’s what pushed her to go to Arizona State. I think maybe if this experience didn’t happen, she would have played it safe.”
Olivia continues to smash through the obstacles that have blocked her path in the past. She continues to take great pride with the circumstances she has had to overcome, but never truly loses sight at what’s most important.
Life itself.
She said there is never a day that goes by when she does not think about Connor and the Gillmore family. He will always be a part of her and that will always be with her for the rest of her life.
“I hope they’re seeing this and they know that I’m putting the heart to good use,” Olivia said. “They know that they’re not like not putting it to waste, but that I’m carrying out a life that they would have wanted their son to have.”
“She’s really using Connor’s heart to show them, ‘I’m doing this for a reason,’” Millie said. “Like he’s given me this gift.”
For more stories from Cronkite News, visit cronkitenews.azpbs.org.
