“Having heart disease is not easy, and finding out the only cure is a heart transplant is really difficult,” says 24-year-old Iris Franco, who received a heart transplant at 16 years old at UCLA Health. “My younger sister became ill when she was 10 years old. They discovered she suffered from restrictive cardiomyopathy, and they decided to check out all of the children to make sure we were okay. It turned out that myself, 12 years old at the time, and my 4-year-old sister were also diagnosed with restrictive cardiomyopathy as well. It was a night and day difference after my transplant. UCLA Health is one of the greatest and most supportive health care systems around. They don’t just treat you as a patient who has something wrong with you; they treat you as a human being who is going through something tough. It made all the difference in my journey.”
Human Being at UCLA Health
