Creating with heart: How Abbott HeartMates give back

Turning lemons into lemonade. April showers bringing May flowers. One door closing, another opening. The sun will come out tomorrow.

Idioms surrounding a setback, challenge or life-altering event creating a positive future impact may be little comfort to those currently navigating heart health challenges. But in the years since facing theirs, that’s how two members of our Abbott HeartMates community, established to connect and support people with heart health stories, choose to see things.

Our goal in establishing our HeartMates program was to connect and inspire people who have gone through these health uncertainties. In turn, they’ve connected with and inspired others, embodying the program’s spirit and our commitment to uplifting those on the road to better health.

DeLainee’s heart health journey

DeLainee Murawski, a 19-year-old baseball enthusiast from Suffolk, Va., can hardly remember a time where her heart health wasn’t a concern.

When she was 4, she collapsed while playing in the yard with her sister. Her mom described DeLainee’s eyes rolling back and her skin turning white. Thankfully, she was able to provide CPR until help arrived.

DeLainee’s tiny heart was beating too rapidly to pump blood efficiently, and she ended up spending a month in the hospital. Catecholaminergic polymorphic ventricular tachycardia, or CPVT, was the culprit.

The following years entailed a slew of implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) implantations, device lead (or wire) replacements, and eventually receiving a pacemaker. When she was on her way home from her hospital visits, her mom was advised to place a pillow between DeLainee’s chest and her seatbelt to avoid pressure and friction on her chest.

“A regular pillow wouldn’t fit in her car seat,” her mom explained. “I got out my sewing machine and made a pillow that would work for her.”

Turning her progress into her passion: Pillows4Patients by DeLainee

As soon as DeLainee was old enough to learn to sew, mom and daughter got to work, remembering their experience in having to figure out seemingly small details like these that come along with a heart condition, not wanting others to feel alone.

For over a decade, DeLainee has picked out various fabrics, sewed the pillow shams, stuffed the pillows, stitched on a custom ‘Pillows4Patients by DeLainee’ tag, and given out hand-packaged specialty pillows to kids and families in hospitals, cardiologist offices and heart health events across the country. All to make fellow “cardio kids,” as she calls them, feel a sense of connection and understanding.

While growing up with a heart condition meant there were moments in her adolescence that she couldn’t take part in, like having sleepovers due to timed medication deliveries and certain physical activities, her “lemonade” has been the soothing time at the sewing machine, stuffing and packaging with family, and setting her sights on helping even more heart health heroes in the future.

Her biggest goal, as she graduates high school this year, is “to deliver comfort pillows to fellow cardio kids in all 50 states.” Her mom smiled with pride. “She has a special heart. A huge heart.”

Ed’s comeback from heart failure

1,300+ miles away, just outside of Dallas, DeLainee’s fellow Abbott HeartMate Ed Goodreau also stitches together something special.

On Easter Sunday of 2024, Ed suffered a heart attack while driving. Only he didn’t think it was a heart attack. He felt ill and let his wife take over the driving to be safe but didn’t realize the gravity of the situation until he woke up in the hospital a week later. “Evidently I was talking to people during that time,” Ed said, “I have no memory of it.”

Soon after, his doctors let him know that he’d need a left ventricular assist device, or LVAD, to restore blood flow. For many recipients, an LVAD means a small, rectangular battery, persistently on their waist.

After having his LVAD for about a year, Ed happened to buy a pair of shorts that had a pocket on the waist that perfectly fit his LVAD battery. “I thought that was neat,” Ed said, and it sparked an idea.

A stylish solution for LVAD users

He enlisted the help of a fellow member of his local senior center to teach him to sew, and using a few pieces of scrap material the center had on hand, she helped him put “pouches” onto a few pairs of pants and shorts. The new addition to his wardrobe made having his LVAD as comfortable as it was lifesaving.

“A lot of people will try to hide them, and certain clothes to conceal them can be expensive,” Ed said. “I found this solution by mistake, but now I’ve given them to others at a Christmas party, my senior center, heart health meetings and doctors’ appointments.”

Aside from his newfound love for sewing, Ed spends his days with his children and grandchildren, gardening, traveling and living his best life.

“I’m battery-operated, and you would never know,” Ed joked. “There’s always going to be some degree of inconvenience that you’ll have to deal with, but you have to be able to get past that. Get up and enjoy life.”

Support for more people in more places

Whether or our HeartMates community or the millions around the world that rely on our health innovations, people like DeLainee and Ed inspire us to continue making life easier, healthier and fuller for everyone. Our HeartMates are one major testament to that commitment.

DeLainee and Ed were 2 of the 11 cohorts drafted into our 2026 Abbott HeartMates draft class, brought together by HeartMates ambassadors Damar Hamlin and Tedy Bruschi to connect with other heart health heroes to provide support to one another.

Within our HeartMates community, Ed and DeLainee share their stories to relate to and uplift fellow members. But their respective crafts help bring that same support to others outside of the program.

Ed has been able to connect with other LVAD recipients and inspire confidence in the technology that changed his life, while DeLainee has been able to talk to others around her age who she can relate to, even making comfort pillows for some of her fellow HeartMates.

When we created our HeartMates program, we aimed to build a community that could relate to and uplift one another. Seeing our community members use those experiences to help others – rays of sunshine breaking through the challenges that sometimes cloud a recovery journey — brings that purpose to life in the best of ways.

Learn more about Abbott HeartMates and join the team.