After an unexpected health crisis, Chris Maslowsky is grateful for the care and support from HSC that helped bring her back home to the people and moments she loves
Chris Maslowsky: “Patients like me know what it means to have HSC there when we need it most.”
My name is Chris Maslowsky, and I’m writing to thank I’ve always been the healthy one in my family. I’m babysitting my granddaughter, dog-sitting the grand-dog, and doing yardwork. I’m the person who can’t sit outside for five minutes without finding something to do.
My family will tell you: I don’t get sick. Not even a cold.
So, when I found myself rushed to HSC twice during spring 2025—once by ambulance—nobody, least of all me, saw it coming.
What started as a cold I couldn’t shake turned into two hospitalizations in the span of a month. Then, on the morning of my dad’s 90th birthday, I could barely make it down the stairs. My daughter, Tara, drove me straight to HSC.
My oxygen levels had dropped dangerously low.
What happened next is mostly a blur to me, but Tara remembers it clearly. She watched as the HSC team moved incredibly quickly—providing oxygen, running tests, and working to understand what was happening.
They discovered blood clots in both legs and both lungs. I was given the highest dose of blood thinners possible and put on high-fl ow oxygen. After being monitored around-the-clock in a high-observation unit, my care team turned to a highly specialized procedure called a thrombectomy to remove the clots directly from my lungs.
Because the clots were so large and located in my lungs, my doctors told me this was an exceptionally rare procedure at HSC.
Thankfully, it worked.
And that’s where donor support matters.
Chris Maslowsky with her daughter Tara Maslowsky: “What happened next is mostly a blur to me, but Tara remembers it clearly. She watched as the HSC team moved incredibly quickly.”
Behind every patient like me is a health care system with the people, expertise, technology, and resources needed to respond when the unexpected happens. The generosity of HSC Foundation donors helps strengthen that system—supporting the equipment, innovation, and care that give patients access to the treatment they need, when they need it most.
After multiple tests came back clear, a bone marrow biopsy finally gave my illness a name: myelofibrosis, a rare bone marrow disorder affecting one in 800,000 people.
A family friend, a former nurse, told me she didn’t know anyone who had survived what I went through.
In 2025, Chris Maslowsky spent Mother’s Day in hospital after recovering from a thrombectomy in the donor-funded Paul Albrechtsen Interventional Radiology Suites. This procedure—typically used for much maller clots in the brain—saved Chris’s life.
I think about that a lot.
But I also think about the people who cared for me.
The health care aides who washed my hair right in my hospital bed, patiently working through a month’s worth of tangles. The staff who helped me change my hospital gown without ever making me feel like a burden. And the doctors who pulled Tara aside—because she was with me constantly—to make sure she was okay, while also checking in with my other children.
I always felt like I was truly being looked after at HSC. And while I will require medication and routine bloodwork for my disorder the rest of my life, I am stable and getting back to what I enjoy most.
Chris Maslowsky is back to doing what she enjoys most, thanks to you and the life-saving care at HSC.
“Thank you” doesn’t seem like enough.
You may never know the name of a patient whose life is touched by your generosity. You may never meet the doctors, nurses, and health care aides whose expertise is amplifi ed by your support.
But patients like me know what it means to have HSC there when we need it most.
For that, I’m endlessly grateful.
