George Kalomiris Funeral Fund

George was just an all-around nice guy. He always helped people in need. He was a family man, with 3 children, twin granddaughters he was always so excited to see, and an elderly mother he’d visit at the nursing home daily. He was an awesome brother and a great friend to all.

I’m Lauren Kalomiris, George’s oldest daughter.

My father passed away on February 15th, 2024, after a long hard battle with heart failure.

My dad was no stranger to health problems. The first one I can remember was when I was in 6th grade, 2005 and he had to have a tumor removed from inside his spinal column, near his brain stem. This required major neurosurgery and left a long scar from the back of his head to the middle of his back.

Other smaller health problems followed, but my dad’s heart problems began in 2017, at the young age of 48. He had multiple heart attacks, and surgeries from 2017 to 2019, one of which was a quadruple bypass. Things from there seemed to mellow out for some time. I think I felt like my dad was invincible, and could over come anything. He was the guy who would pull over and help change a tire for a stranger on the side of the road.

Come 2023, dad was getting more tired, and having a harder time just doing his everyday activities. In June of 2023, my dad was back in the hospital, where he had an angiogram, and stents put in. The holidays came and our time together was suddenly very limited. My own family was sick with RSV for thanksgiving, and Covid during Christmas. We had to cancel our Christmas morning plans with dad to make sure he stayed safe and healthy. Even then, it broke my heart having to turn down visits with dad because of us being sick. In January he was hospitalized 3 separate times for kidney issues, which led doctors to find that his heart was not pumping efficiently enough to provide oxygen to his organs.

He was in heart failure.

My dad was then informed that he needed to have a heart transplant. Now, I’m no doctor, and I had no idea what kind of conditions needed to be met for my dad to qualify for a heart transplant, but the list is complex.

With my dad’s rare blood type, the doctors informed us there would be a considerable wait for him to receive a donor heart that is also the right size, and with the right antibodies. The doctors at Northwest Community Hospital recommended dad have open-heart surgery for an LVAD (Left ventricular assistive device), which would have been a bridge towards the heart transplant. They transferred him to Evanston Hospital where they could perform the LVAD surgery. There, the doctors placed two temporary pumps to keep his heart going until his scheduled LVAD surgery. Things seemed to be going well until two days before his surgery when he started having a dangerous arrhythmia (ventricular tachycardia, aka v-tach) for which he needed to be shocked to restore normal heart rhythm. This wasn’t a one time occurrence, it happened 6 times that first night, and 10 times the following day. During the first 6 episodes they decided to put dad into an induced coma, so he would not feel any pain from being shocked. Our family anxiously gathered in the waiting room until things seemed calm, and we all went home. The rest of the night was quiet, but the v-tach started again the next morning. This is when the doctors decided to put dad on a full heart and lung machine, called ECMO. Our family came back to the hospital, where they told us they decided that the LVAD surgery was no longer an option, and wanted to transfer dad to the University of Chicago Medicine Transplant Center, where they are known for taking on the most complicated cardiac patients. We all waited for two days for a room to become available in the Cardiovascular ICU. Once he was transferred we became hopeful again that something could be done. They performed various procedures to determine where the v-tach episodes were coming from, and thought they had figured out the source. After those procedures, dad had a handful of better days. The doctors were hopeful and talks of having an LVAD and an RVAD were put back on the table. They also had determined that if they were going to perform those surgeries that a few additional surgeries would accompany it. Those included aortic valve replacement, bypass graft, and possibly a ventricular tachycardia ablation.

On Valentine’s Day morning, the day after we talked about all these operations, I received a call from my sister Zoe. Dad needed to be shocked 5 more times, and the team of doctors wanted the whole family to come in to talk to us. While my aunt, brother, and sister made it to the hospital in time to speak with the doctors, I myself had to pull into a parking lot and listen on the phone. My heart sank as we were told that, because dad was having the V-tach episodes again, this was his body’s way of telling us that there wasn’t anything more they could do. He was going into multiple organ failure and his heart had been starting to die, so without the ECMO machine, he couldn’t continue to live. Knowing that my dad didn’t want to live without a quality of life, we chose to let him pass peacefully with all of his loved ones by his side.

We created this gofundme as our family is completely unprepared financially to pay for a funeral. Please help us fund the funeral arrangements and make sure my dad has a proper burial. Any donation is helpful and appreciated.

George Kalomiris

3/14/1968 - 2/15/2024