Heart transplant recipients healed by love get hitched
ROCHESTER, New York -- When Danny Pszczolkowski and his sweetheart Esther FitzRandolph walked down the aisle last weekend, they did so in the usual way, but in a most unusual place -- a hospital chapel.
"It just seemed like the obvious place to be married when our love started here," said FitzRandolph.
"I didn't want to do anything," FitzRandolph told us. "I would just sit around."
Pszczolkowski echoed her dreary feelings.
"I kind of refused the exercises and all that at times," he told us.
But after they started dating they started improving. So quickly, their doctors couldn't believe it.
Cardiologist Dr. Leway Chen said he and his staff didn't know about the romance.
"We talked and said, 'Yea, she's doing better now, I wonder why. And yes, he's been more active and involved in his care, I wonder why,'" said Chen.
Today Dr. Chen gives full credit to the healing power of love.
"When your mind is in a better place, and your heart, then you're going to heal better," said FitzRandolph.
For the last few months they've been living together on Carefree Lane. That's actually the name of the street -- where the lifelong bachelor now hangs his new, flowered coffee mugs.
"This is even worst," FitzRandolph said, holding up more flowery ceramics.
"Honey, it's 'worse,' it's not 'worst,'" she corrected him.
Living with a woman will clearly take some getting used to. But Danny says he wouldn't trade this for the world. And he won't have to -- thanks to two new hearts that are now off and racing.
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