Long Beach father Rhett Pascual isn’t losing hope despite waiting for weeks to be put on the waiting list to receive a life-saving heart transplant.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“The hospital said, well, your insurance isn’t going to cover this, the heart transplant, and we were just like, what do you mean?” Rhett’s wife, Julia Pascual, said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Julia Pascual said her family immediately started raising funds to cover the cost. Her husband has cardiomyopathy, a rare heart condition. When they finally got approval from insurance and had the money, doctors told Rhett Pascual that he wasn’t healthy enough to qualify for a transplant.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It’s unnerving, and it’s unacceptable in this day and age,” Julia Pascual said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
His family, including his 20-year-old son Rhyss Pascual, has been by his side every single day.<\/p>\n
“We still need our father in our lives,” Rhyss Pascual said. “He is very young, and he has a lot more life to live.”<\/p>\n
Hanging in Rhett Pascual’s hospital room are messages from his son and 10-year-old daughter reminding him to hold onto his faith and remember how much he’s loved.<\/p>\n
“He’s a fighter,” his son said. “He doesn’t want to give up.”<\/p>\n
Rhett Pascual’s 75-year-old mother said the process of watching him lose his strength has been excruciating.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I told him, if I could trade places with you, I would, because I’ve lived my life,” she said. “The parents should not be burying their child.”<\/p>\n
Julia Pascual said she wants her husband to be around to watch his daughter graduate fifth grade and celebrate her birthday but the clock is ticking and they’re preparing for moments he might miss.<\/p>\n
“Just give me a video. Just talk to your daughter and tell her you love her,” Julia Pascual said. “Give her some words of wisdom because we don’t know.”<\/p>\n
The family said they are holding onto their faith as they watch their loved one fight for his life.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We are praying, and we are hopeful,” Julia Pascual said. “We have everybody praying because we believe in miracles.”<\/p>\n
Rhett Pascual is doing physical therapy and trying to regain enough strength to get onto the transplant list.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Long Beach father Rhett Pascual isn’t losing hope despite waiting for weeks to be put on the waiting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":238771,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-238770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238770\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}