WESCOSVILLE, Pa. – As families across the country celebrate Father’s Day this weekend, one Lehigh County father has an extra reason to be grateful.<\/p>\n
For Erik Heckler of Wescosville, being able to spend time with his wife and two children is something he never takes for granted. After years of battling kidney disease, undergoing dialysis and waiting nearly four years for a second transplant, Heckler is now healthier than ever and enjoying the moments that matter most.<\/p>\n
“Being able to focus on the things in life that matter, my family is my biggest priority,” Heckler said.<\/p>\n
Heckler’s health journey began in 2017 during what he thought was a routine doctor’s appointment. “I found out about a week later that my kidney function was about 20 to 25 percent,” he said.<\/p>\n
Doctors soon diagnosed him with Focal Segmental Glomerulosclerosis, or FSGS, a disease that causes scarring in the kidneys and can eventually lead to kidney failure.<\/p>\n
Just six months after his diagnosis, Heckler received a living donor kidney from his mother.<\/p>\n
For a time, life returned to normal. He and his wife, Lacia, were preparing to welcome their first child. But that progress was short-lived. After contracting COVID-19, Heckler’s transplanted kidney failed.<\/p>\n
“You can just kind of imagine the chaos that ensued at a point where I’ve got COVID, my wife’s pregnant, right as we find out I have to go on dialysis,” Heckler said.<\/p>\n
As the couple welcomed their son, Jacob, Heckler began a 14-hour dialysis routine that consumed much of his daily life.<\/p>\n
“I’d be home by 7 o’clock every night so that way I could just set up the machine, and I couldn’t leave my house until about 8 in the morning,” he said.<\/p>\n
His days revolved around work, medical treatments and recovery, leaving little time or energy for family activities. Simple pleasures such as riding a bike or spending time at the pool were no longer possible.<\/p>\n
As months turned into years, his health continued to decline.<\/p>\n
“As he was getting close towards the end there with dialysis and everything, he was getting bad,” Lacia Heckler recalled. “He was expressing to me how sad he was. You could feel it in the air. We just had to hold onto hope.”<\/p>\n
That hope finally arrived. After waiting three years and 10 months, Heckler received another kidney transplant.<\/p>\n
“In total, it was exactly 3 years and 10 months until I received another transplant,” he said.<\/p>\n
The impact was immediate.<\/p>\n
“I’m fantastic. Health-wise, I’m probably as healthy as I’ve ever been, which is great,” Heckler said.<\/p>\n
The transplant gave him more than improved health. They decided to expand their family. Today, the Hecklers are parents to two children. Their daughter, Melanie, is now 9 months old.<\/p>\n
“Quite frankly, if the transplant hadn’t happened, even a year later, we probably wouldn’t have had her,” Heckler said. “So, this timing was about as perfect as it could’ve been.”<\/p>\n
While Heckler knows little about the person who made his second chance possible, he thinks about her often. All he knows is that his donor was a woman whose family honored her decision to donate her organs after her death.<\/p>\n
“How do I know I’m owning up to the gift? Am I doing the right thing for someone else, you know, in their name?” Heckler said.<\/p>\n
As he celebrates Father’s Day with his family, he continues to search for the best way to express his gratitude.<\/p>\n
“I don’t know how do I say thank you for that,” he said. “I don’t know, other than to live the best possible life.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WESCOSVILLE, Pa. – As families across the country celebrate Father’s Day this weekend, one Lehigh County father has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":223600,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[214,119,121,120,805],"class_list":["post-223599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-lehighvalley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}