SAN ANTONIO – Two San Antonio sisters bonded by a genetic heart condition want others to know the symptoms, even if they don’t have the condition themselves.
Harper and Heidi Gaffney share more than sisterhood. Both live with familial congestive heart failure, a genetic condition that made it hard for their hearts to pump blood. Doctors knew they would eventually need heart transplants.
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“It was just a normal day, and it ended up me going to the hospital,” Harper said.
Harper and her family had gone to a nail salon when one of the nail techs noticed something wasn’t right.
“One of our nail technicians saw that my feet and legs were really swollen, and he was like, ‘You might want to go get that checked out,’” Harper said. “And then we ended up knowing I was in organ failure.”
The two sisters relied on a battery-operated mechanical pump made by Abbott called the HeartMate 3 LVAD, or left ventricular assist device. The pump helped their hearts circulate blood and kept them healthy enough to wait for donor hearts.
“HeartMate 3 LVAD allowed Heidi to go to school and have her senior year,” their mother, Ashley Gaffney, said. “Harper was in middle school and went to school with the device.”
A year later, both sisters received heart transplants
While attending North Side Independent School District schools, both girls received heart transplants in 2025 at Dell Children’s Medical Center.
“I saw a big difference in her after she got her transplant,” Heidi said of Harper. “She was very willing to go out and go on walks. You were more excited to do active things.”
Harper said her sister’s support helped her through some of the hardest days.
“I would call you, and you would tell me, ‘You got this’ and ‘Don’t give up,”' she said.
Ashley Gaffney hopes their story encourages parents to pay attention to potential warning signs and to push for heart screenings when something feels off.
“Definitely get your kids’ hearts checked,” she said. “Even recently, we’ve had a couple of athletes that have passed out at practice that ended up having underlying heart conditions that nobody was aware of.”
Congenital heart conditions are among the most common birth defects in the United States. Federal data show about 1 in every 100 children is affected.
“We’ve been so blessed, and the girls have not had any implications,” Ashley Gaffney said. “It’s really like our lives were rewound, and we were back before all this happened.”
Now, Heidi is looking ahead to a career in health care so she can give other children the kind of support she needed.
“I want to be that nurse for other kids,” she said. “And not like, ‘I’m sorry you’re going through this,’ but like, ‘I understand you. I’ve been through this,’ and kind of help them through it.”
With two successful heart transplants behind them, the Gaffney sisters say they’re ready to move forward and will keep speaking out so others recognize the symptoms of heart trouble early, even if heart disease doesn’t already run in their family.