Opinion: The Song Of A Father's Heartbeat

https://www.npr.org/2021/06/19/ [login to see] /opinion-the-song-of-a-fathers-heartbeat
Lucio Arreola is going to have an astounding Father's Day this year. He finds just about every day astounding now.

Arreola has a new heart; or at least, new to him. He is 50 years old, the father of three daughters and a banking executive in Puerto Rico. On April 20, doctors at Houston Methodist Hospital performed a transplant to implant inside him the heart of a deceased 25-year-old man whose identity he may never know, but to whom he and his family will always be grateful.

Arreola was told he had a heart muscle disease 15 years ago that weakened his breathing and circulation. He went on a sequence of medications, while he and his wife, Elena, raised three daughters: Maria, now 21, Paulina, 19, and Lucia, 17. They worried about their father's health. He worried about their happiness.

"I live for them," he told us this week. "I worried if I could do what a father really should do for his children. But I knew if they were going to grow up, they had to treat me like a normal person, not a patient."