CHICOPEE, Mass. (WWLP) – Triple organ transplant recipient Lauren Meizo has much to be thankful for.

The 29-year-old Chicopee woman is now engaged to the man who stood by her during her hospitalizations that started six-years-ago. With her fiance Michael Dutton by her side, Meizo spoke of receiving two heart transplants and a kidney transplant and spending so much of the last decade in the hospital.

Meizo received her second heart transplant almost a year ago, at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, after a very public visit from Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski.

But privately and constantly, Dutton was there with support to match her courage through years of ordeal and uncertainty.

“I didn’t know how I was going to look afterward or how I was going to feel,” Meizo told 22News. “He gave me the confidence I needed to get through it. I had the support of everyone else, but his was something different.”

Meizo and Dutton got engaged earlier in 2019, after having first met many years ago as Chicopee High School students. Meizo admits she had a crush on Dutton even back then.

“We’ve been through so much I think we can do anything,” Dutton said. “We’ve been through hell and back. It showed our strength together as a couple. He described his future wife as ‘A wonderful human being and I love being in her life.'”

Still in recovery from her second heart transplant, Meizo and Dutton have plans to marry in the fall of 2021, when she will officially give her third heart to Dutton.

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