CHICAGO A heart transplant patient who married his high school sweetheart last week in the chapel at the University of Chicago Medical Center died Monday, days after leaving the hospital, his family said Wednesday.
Javier Rodriguez, known to his family and friends as Javi, was 23 years old. He had familial dilated cardiomyopathy, a genetic disease that predisposes victims to develop heart failure at a young age. He had two heart transplants, one when he was 14 and another when he was 18.
His most recent physician, Dr. Bryan Smith, said Rodriguez was not eligible for a third heart transplant because he had acquired infections and had kidney dysfunction.
After his most recent stay in the hospital of 43 days, Rodriguez returned home and went into hospice care Friday, a day after officials originally had thought he might go home.
Two days before he went home, he married his longtime girlfriend, Crystal Cuevas.
Cuevas said she met Rodriguez through mutual friends when they were both juniors in high school.
He had this aura to him, Cuevas said. He walked into a room and you smelled confidence.
Since then, shes accumulated hundreds of (hospital) passes, she said.
The weekend before their wedding, Rodriguez told Cuevas that he decided he wanted to go into hospice care, she said. I always try to keep it together in front of him, but that day I couldnt.
She thought of their 3-month-old daughter, Leia. I didnt grow up with a dad, and thats the one thing I always wanted to give my baby girl and thats what he wanted, she said.
They tried to fit in as many pictures and videos and all of that as possible, so that shell never think that she didnt have a dad.
The day before the wedding, Smith said, Rodriguez talked about what he wanted to do in his last few days and told Smith he wanted his tombstone to say husband. Hospital staff scrambled to make marriage arrangements, baking a three-layer strawberry cake and decorating the chapel with silver ornaments and white balloons.
Funeral arrangements for Rodriguez will be private, Cuevas said.
