July 3, 2024
From Life-Saving Miracle to Hallmark Movie: Heather Krueger’s Story of Survival and Self-Empowerment
What happens when a life-saving act intertwines with a whirlwind romance and public attention? Discover Heather Krueger’s remarkable story of survival and transformation. Diagnosed with stage 4 autoimmune hepatitis just before her 25th birthday, Heather was in desperate need of a liver transplant. A stranger's selfless act saved her life and led to a rapid and intense romantic relationship, capturing the media's attention and inspiring a Hallmark movie. Heather shares the stark differences between the fairy tale portrayed and the real emotional and psychological hurdles she faced during her recovery.
Journey into the emotional complexities of Heather's life as she navigated profound gratitude and obligation toward her donor-turned-husband. The pressure of public validation and the need to maintain a facade of hope took a heavy toll on Heather's mental health and self-esteem. Listen as Heather bravely opens up about the struggle to differentiate genuine love from a sense of indebtedness and how the swift progression of their relationship left her little room to process her trauma or make grounded decisions. Despite the turmoil, Heather's dedication to raising awareness about living liver donations became her beacon of purpose.
Heather's story is one of survival, resilience, and empowerment. Hear how she overcame the unexpected challenges of her deteriorating relationship, physical scars, and societal pressures, all while finding strength in honesty, humor, and faith. Heather’s journey from a fairytale romance to self-discovery and empowerment is a moving testament to the power of hope and the human spirit. Her candid reflections offer inspiration and guidance for others facing their own life-altering challenges.
Chapters
00:02 - Real-Life Miracle
06:58 - A Fairy Tale Turned Tragedy
17:40 - Love, Recovery, and Control
27:40 - Overcoming Challenges and Finding Hope
Transcript
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This week's episode is nothing short of a real-life Hallmark movie with a twist.
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Meet Heather Kruger, whose journey began with a devastating diagnosis of stage 4 autoimmune hepatitis just before her 25th birthday.
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Against all odds, she found a living donor, a stranger, who not only saved her life but also stole her heart.
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Their story of survival and romance seemed like a dream come true that it even inspired the Hallmark movie Once Upon a Christmas Miracle.
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But like any true story, the reality behind the fairy tale isn't always what it seems.
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Today, we'll learn about Heather's incredible journey of survival, heartbreak and, ultimately, self-empowerment.
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Stay tuned to find out how she transformed her life after a liver transplant and an unexpected divorce.
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We'll also see what love really looked like.
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Once the cameras stopped rolling, I'm Keri Brett and Shout Out Love starts.
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Now Heather Kruger understands that real life is more like a lifetime special rather than a hallmark movie.
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She's a girl who learned that life is full of obstacles that we must overcome, and now Heather uses her experiences to inspire and coach others.
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It is my honor to welcome Heather Kruger to the show today.
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Hi, heather, thanks so much for being here.
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Thank you for having me so excited to have you.
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This is amazing.
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What a story that you have, but for a period of time, you buried your story, almost denying your reality.
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But today you've decided to share the truth about what's happened to you so you can inspire others.
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So I'm going to take us back to the beginning, back to March of 2014, just before your 25th birthday.
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Take us back to that time.
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I really didn't have any health issues prior to that time period.
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I initially was going to school for nursing and some health issues started to come around.
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I could not keep up with that load, so I was working part-time as a nursing assistant and going to school part-time as a medical assistant.
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I began to get some pain on my stomach.
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A lot of fatigue was going to primary care and specialists for blood tests, you know CAT scans, ultrasounds and I was told everything was fine.
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My gallbladder might be a little sluggish, until one day at work someone told me my eyes were yellow, no liver issues in the family.
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It was really quite a surprise when I finally got the diagnosis at the university here in Chicago of stage 4 liver disease.
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So you find out this devastating news and you're doing your very best trying to process this information, and the doctors have given you about two months to live, unless you find a living donor.
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Correct yes, about three months after I got diagnosed I went into acute liver failure and was jaundiced, hallucinating from all the toxins.
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And at that point they said, based on my numbers, I had less than 50% chance of living another two months, and within a week of that I was put on the Illinois liver transplant wait list.
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Now, this is an insanely scary time, but you had real faith and you believed that someone would come forward.
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So you dug deep into your spirituality and you start your search for a donor.
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In January 2015,.
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A stranger came into the picture.
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Tell me about this.
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Originally I was on the wait list for if someone was to pass away.
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I got worse very quickly so they said you should start looking for a living donor because your odds might be of survival might be a hair butter.
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My sister made a flyer.
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We're putting flyers out social media.
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January of 2015, my cousin was working with somebody who happened to overhear him speaking of his cousin who desperately needed a liver transplant and he decided to get tested.
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I had a lot of people get tested but no one was a match at that point and found out that he was a match and got that phone call from him.
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So this was like a Christmas miracle.
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This was a miracle that you had hoped for Absolutely, and you're kind of blown away because the odds of finding a living owner back then was less than 2%.
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Yes, you're really in a vulnerable state, very much so.
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Literally like life or death Any transplant really is.
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If you get too sick, even if you get a donor, they won't do the surgery because you're not going to make it off the table.
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So it was really a timing game here too.
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And so this stranger appears, this man out of nowhere.
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He's telling you that out of the kindness of his heart, he's going to do this for you, and a lot of people donate organs anonymously, like they don't do it to have it be picked up as a news story.
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You have to have that option of staying anonymous as well as, let's say, if someone passed away and their family went ahead with donating their organs.
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Most people a lot of times stay anonymous as well with that, even though their loved one has passed away.
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You're a lot of times stay anonymous as well with that, even though their loved one has passed away.
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You're a young girl.
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Everything's been kind of taken from you your health.
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You're so vulnerable you can't drive.
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You're in a wheelchair.
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You're so sick you can't walk.
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Yeah, my mom, who was a teacher.
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She even had to retire early to become my caregiver at that point.
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So you're trying to manage this life altering situation.
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You meet him and your family meets him and, like you said, it's a real timing thing.
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So very soon after meeting you go and have the transplant.
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What was it like for you in the hospital, Like did this bond just happen immediately with this donor?
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It really did at the time feel like you know it was a match made in heaven because of the timing.
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At that point, when I got the phone call from him, I really, truly felt my body shutting down.
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I was afraid to go to sleep at night because I was afraid I wasn't going to wake up the next morning.
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And I'm extremely close with my family.
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I have a younger sister and I refused to let that happen.
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At that point I was fighting to stay alive for myself, but even more so for my family, because of just the sheer fear and terror on their face every day, watching me struggle.
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I need them, but they need me even more.
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So when he came along, I literally thought he was my guardian angel, the answer to my prayers.
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And I really resonate when you said something like you saw the terror on your parents' faces and you could fight for everyone else because you could see everyone suffering, so your gratitude was through the roof.
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Anyone can see how you could take that gratitude and easily turn it into love for the person who saved your life easily turn it into love for the person who saved your life.
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Yes, because I mean when you're hanging on by a thread and you know the odds are against you and doctors are telling you this that is your only option transplant, or you're going to die and then that person comes along, emotions are all over the place and it's, like I said, it's very confusing because my whole life as I knew it was just ripped out from underneath me.
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You don't you don't expect 25 to get a diagnosis of cirrhosis still to this day.
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It's very surreal.
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But now your confidence, like everything, like you said is ripped away from you your health, your confidence.
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You become this sick girl now that your mom has to quit her job to take care of you full time.
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You become dependent on other people who will love you.
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You've got this big scar.
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Like you start chipping away, illness chips away at your worth.
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It does, cause it's not just the physical, which I think sometimes people don't realize it's, it's just as much physical, I would say, even more so emotional and mental, that really take the brunt of going through that whole situation.
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So you build this like pedestal almost for the donor and he becomes your match made in heaven, your guardian angel.
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You start to rely on him and you start to date and very soon after the transplant and the surgery you start this fairytale romance, really, that the press loves and it catches attention very quickly.
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Really, before we even got the transplant, or before I got the transplant, actually the local news and the local newspapers were already interviewing us.
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So then, once this surgery happened and word got out that we were dating, wow, it really exploded then.
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Because people hold on to fairy tales.
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They want that everyday fairy tale yes, that, that happy, happy ending to something that could have ended very tragically, you know and now you become celebrities.
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I mean, if you google your name, there's so many articles written about you.
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I mean more articles than someone who's really like everyday famous actor, crazy.
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You don't get caught up in it, you.
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You use the attention and the opportunity as far as the media to raise awareness and to help other people and that helped you heal, because you didn't know how to really heal yourself.
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I don't think anyone's given a playbook of how to really heal yourself.
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I don't think anyone's given a playbook of how to do that, but you became a source of inspiration for so many people.
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I feel like it has taken so long to process everything.
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So during that time, I started to question.
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You know what was my purpose?
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I've been a good person, you know like why.
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Why did this happen?
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But at the same time, I was like gosh.
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There are so many people who are still waiting for a transplant and they're dealing with rejection after the transplant or they're dying waiting for it, and so at the time, you didn't hear as much about living liver donation.
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So I wanted to use my story as a platform to get the word out about it and to educate others about it, because I didn't even know that the liver can regenerate and you can donate a portion and it grows back to full size, like all these things.
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Okay, the silver lining was I'm going to help other people and inspire them and provide the hope during a very lonely period of their life, because, even though you have family and friends around you, when you're dealing with something medically, it's very lonely.
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So I wanted to be that provide that spark in other people that you know I felt like I needed when I was going through it as well, when people wanted to interview I was sharing about liver donation and just that inspiration around it.
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The momentum builds and you're dating and you don't realize it, but at the time you have this magical proposal in Chicago.
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People like love this, oh, this dream come true.
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But that all unfolded pretty quickly after the surgery, so it takes a full year to heal.
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That was the other thing too.
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It was like I didn't even process what just happened.
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Now I'm jumping into a relationship with this person who saved my life and then, on top of that, we're having constant validation or affirmation that this is true love.
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This is a fairy tale, you know, like that constant reinforcement in my mind.
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I was 26 when we got engaged, so circumstances around it were very interesting you're almost like programmed or groomed, because now Anthony Anderson wants you on Tell the Truth and the Steve Harvey show.
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They decide that they're going to gift you with your honeymoon and it does seem like everyone is saying this is.
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You should be so appreciative.
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You're living a fairy tale.
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This is amazing, and your family is so happy that this man saved your life that they want to thank him.
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So they pay for this big wedding.
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They even buy him a motorcycle.
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They set you up to buy your grandmother's house.
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It's like you almost A didn't have time to process what was happening, and even if you had your own individual thoughts about what was happening.
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There was a lot of outside influence and so you know the reality of your situation and that you are still living in this huge trauma and you're basically in a trauma bond, if you think about it, and certainly not in a situation to make this big life decision of getting married.
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And you are still in school full-time and you wanted to wait and you knew enough to put the brakes on this, but he pushed the marriage along I felt like things were probably moving a little too fast.
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My sister said moving a little too fast.
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You know hindsight's 20 20, but looking back now it seems like that was somebody else's life, like you know the questions you would ask somebody if you were looking to get married, the things you would have in place and planning and all of that that goes along with marrying someone another huge life changing decision.
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I look back on now and none of that was done.
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It was.
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It just was very rushed.
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Yeah, it does seem rushed.
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And now you get this call that your love story is now being turned into a Hallmark movie.
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So tell me about that call.
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So we received that call I believe it was over the summer after we got married, and they basically said that you know they had seen from social media and the different shows that we were already on and they wanted to turn our story into a Hallmark Christmas movie, basically wanted the rights to that and just the details about how everything unfolded.
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And what's crazy is they use your real name and they really take your whole life story and it takes a little bit of time to build out a movie like that.
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You know that this is going to unfold.
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You know that there's going to be a red carpet, that people are going to want to know who you are and at the same time, they are filming this fairy tale romance for Hallmark.
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Your marriage is crumbling behind the scenes.
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Yes, probably six months into the marriage, things started to come out Like I said, those questions that if I wasn't in this trauma headspace I would have asked or demanded concrete answers for prior to getting married.
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I started pressing him on these things, eventually forced to tell the truth on them.
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It was very difficult because we had signed this contract with hallmark and we're working closely with them and with the script and the story.
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Does the sound right?
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And then we're continuing to do other interviews.
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Now we've started individual and marriage counseling at the same time.
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In my head it was a very difficult place to be because it's like well, heather, you should be grateful, like it's a miracle and it is.
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I may not be here if it wasn't for him so there was that internal struggle of you should be grateful you're happy, you're alive, you're all these things.
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But then this other grateful you're happy, you're alive, you're all these things.
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But then this other side is, you're feeling very deceived and manipulated.
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And now looking at, was their motive here?
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Was this really all the goodness and kindness of someone's heart?
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All these things start creeping in at that point.
00:16:24.519 --> 00:16:29.370
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00:16:29.370 --> 00:16:34.614
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00:16:54.011 --> 00:17:01.832
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00:17:33.964 --> 00:17:38.923
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Love can't be built on a liver, right, I mean, this is really has transpired here.
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He got all these things from this donation and so now his life improves, and I can understand why you felt so trapped because you can't work full time.
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You have that year that you've got to recover.
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Some people never recover.
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Some people don't even live after a transplant.
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Like this is your reality and you probably shouldn't have been doing all this press and working, if you think about it.
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I know.
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I went back to work nine months after I went back to school full time 12 months after we were traveling and you're trying to support this story.
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It's a narrative.
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It became very difficult.
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Ok, you're trying to recover physically and process I mean emotionally and mentally, go to school full time, and what you thought was OK.
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Yes, this was a tragedy, like what I had to go through, but this person saved my life and that's the silver lining.
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He's accepting me for who I am and even though I have these health conditions, but he's going to be there for me and we're going to work through this together.
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And then that starts to crumble.
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It really starts to take a toll, Like you said, on your, your self-esteem, your confidence, your belief in how far you can go in life, your potential.
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You start to question all of those things.
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And then, okay, I'm supposed to be the hope and inspiration out of this story to help other people.
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And now it's like, okay, my story isn't even what I believed it was, you know.
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So how do I continue to put on this face when I'm starting to feel like I'm two-faced because of it, even though it's not my fault technically?
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It's interesting because in the movie you hear repeatedly like how could I ever thank you, thank you for saving me?
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You know what I mean when there's a swing in power, and I've learned this in relationships.
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In a relationship you can't have a driver and a passenger and so, because he was the donor, he had that liver, which I said it's like a liver leverage, like he was able to hold that over you.
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He may not have done that purposely, but it was there.
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It was always like you said, whether it was verbally spoken by him or not, it was there, and even myself I felt somewhat of guilt within the relationship oh, stay or go, but then in the back of your head well, he did save my life.
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Do I owe this to him?
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So that's really where things like.
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The struggle as well and we're speaking with the therapist of separating the two things Okay, the relationship and this act of kindness and saving, of saving your life the gratitude part and the love part, separating this too, and that's where you mixed up the feelings of gratitude, and anyone that we've talked about this to everyone says the same thing.
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I would have done the same thing.
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Yes, like for a while after.
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I'm like man.
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How could I have?
00:20:57.106 --> 00:20:59.361
Why did I not see some of these things?
00:20:59.361 --> 00:21:03.369
How could I have been that like blinded or whatever?
00:21:03.369 --> 00:21:06.395
And you know, like you said, anyone we've talked to.
00:21:06.395 --> 00:21:07.719
I've talked to my therapist.
00:21:07.719 --> 00:21:10.746
She's like anyone in your situation.
00:21:10.746 --> 00:21:13.232
I see how it could have happened.
00:21:13.232 --> 00:21:24.790
You know you could have mistaken this true love knight in shining armor for what really was just an extreme sense of gratitude and appreciation for what he did for me.
00:21:30.660 --> 00:21:33.005
And the other thing too when you're a kind person, which I know you are, you wear your heart on your sleeve.
00:21:33.005 --> 00:21:35.590
People mistake kindness for weakness and you were never weak.
00:21:35.590 --> 00:21:43.647
You weren't because I know how strong you are, because you had all this compounded trauma.
00:21:43.647 --> 00:21:47.633
There's this young girl who's so sick and has two.
00:21:47.633 --> 00:21:49.474
It's a dire situation.
00:21:49.474 --> 00:21:50.036
It's timing.
00:21:50.036 --> 00:21:51.344
You have two months to live.
00:21:51.344 --> 00:21:52.407
Will she live?
00:21:52.407 --> 00:21:53.846
Will she recover?
00:21:53.846 --> 00:21:59.152
You're signing waivers that certain percent of people don't make it through the surgery.
00:21:59.152 --> 00:22:01.267
It's a lot to deal with.
00:22:01.267 --> 00:22:03.909
And now you're living this lie.
00:22:03.909 --> 00:22:07.480
You can't tell Hallmark, you can't tell your family.
00:22:08.324 --> 00:22:11.913
That was very difficult to continue to.
00:22:11.913 --> 00:22:18.127
I mean, we were in a contract, the movie was being made to continue on with that and put on a happy face.
00:22:18.127 --> 00:22:21.962
At that point it was like I almost had to separate myself.
00:22:21.962 --> 00:22:38.909
It's so true, kindness is always mistaken for weakness and unfortunately, you know, like I said, I always have a smile on my face, I laugh easily, I'm bubbly and I'm the person I've always thought of other people's feelings before myself, to a fault at times.
00:22:38.909 --> 00:23:02.138
You know, now that I think about it, it kind of this kind of helped to my advantage when I had to just get through that time period until the movie came out because I had to separate myself, like, okay, this isn't about me anymore, I have to just continue to put this kind of front on because, regardless, I know it's still helping people Everything is going to come out in the wash, it's a matter of time.
00:23:02.138 --> 00:23:06.512
But just use the situation to the best of your ability.
00:23:06.512 --> 00:23:12.133
I mean, because it was I really felt and I was trapped for that time period.
00:23:12.555 --> 00:23:17.029
As you focus on the positive and you can't control that your marriage is crumbling.
00:23:17.029 --> 00:23:25.955
You can't control the timeline of the movie, but you can control being the ambassador of hope and educating other people about liver disease and organ donations.
00:23:25.955 --> 00:23:30.150
And in the beginning you were helping a lot of people and you got a lot out of that.
00:23:30.150 --> 00:23:37.951
But you actually needed help and this is your personality of oh, I can't tell the truth.
00:23:37.951 --> 00:23:40.577
I can't, I've got to hide really what's happening.
00:23:40.577 --> 00:23:43.567
Tell the truth, I can't.
00:23:43.567 --> 00:23:44.529
I've got to hide really what's happening.
00:23:44.529 --> 00:23:45.775
I should just be grateful I got this gift of a lifetime.
00:23:45.775 --> 00:23:47.240
I don't even know how you saw that.
00:23:47.240 --> 00:23:50.430
Like, I don't even know how you got untangled in this web.
00:23:50.430 --> 00:23:52.134
It's like a psychological.
00:23:52.134 --> 00:23:53.136
I mean, it's crazy.
00:23:53.664 --> 00:23:57.174
Yeah, I got to the point where I could not do the interviews anymore.
00:23:57.174 --> 00:24:03.377
Like you said, I wear my heart on my sleeve, so if I don't verbally say something, my face is going to show it.
00:24:03.377 --> 00:24:11.471
And I got to the point where, like I can't keep putting on this happy mask, Like I just I'm done with the interviews.
00:24:11.912 --> 00:24:12.855
It didn't serve you.
00:24:12.855 --> 00:24:15.733
You were the one who needed the liver transplant.
00:24:15.733 --> 00:24:20.455
You didn't really necessarily care about the fame or the attention.
00:24:21.136 --> 00:24:21.337
Yes.
00:24:21.337 --> 00:24:27.890
So I was like I am done, do not schedule another thing, because I just can't face this anymore.
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