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“Mommy is coming home for Christmas!” 

You can almost hear squeals of delight from a toddler who couldn’t possibly understand the harrowing fight for life that her mother has survived.

Carrie Thornley Fisher was in heart failure near the end of her second pregnancy. After giving birth to a healthy boy, the 32-year-old spent nearly two months on life-saving mechanical support until she received a heart transplant Sept. 19 at UR Medicine’s Strong Memorial Hospital, upstate New York’s only comprehensive heart failure service.

“She was extremely sick, she was in cardiogenic shock, meaning her heart was very unstable,” said cardiologist Jeffrey Alexis, M.D., of UR Medicine’s Advanced Heart Failure Program. “She may not have realized how sick she was because a young person’s body can tolerate a lot and hide heart failure.”

Strong Memorial Hospital's Cardiac Catheterization Lab is an unusual place for the birth of a child, but for Jessica Driffill, it was the right place.