Sosa, 44, is battling end-stage liver disease related to Hepatitis C and is now on a list to receive a liver transplant. He and his fiance, Adriana Tafoya, 32, hope the ravaging disease will spare him until then.
"There are things that I haven't yet learned that I need to," Sosa, a tall man with striking features, said recently from the couple's Temple City home. "I think there are things I can offer people, love and advice, from the things I've experienced in my life."
On Monday, the couple will exchange vows at an intimate ceremony at the Maxwell House in Pasadena. The whole event - from the couple's attire, to the
catering and venue - is being donated by area vendors through Wish Upon a Wedding, a nonprofit that grants weddings for those facing life-threatening illnesses and other serious circumstances.Sosa, who has five children but never married, said he is "in shock" by everyone's generosity.
"I told them, `why would you guys help us?"' said Sosa, who owned a real estate investment firm before doctors ordered him to stop working years ago. "I was very touched, especially because I wouldn't be able to do it because of my sickness and my finances."
Sosa and Tafoya's wedding will be the third for the Southern California Chapter of Wish Upon a Wedding, one of two dozen chapters throughout the nation.
"We try to make them feel like guests at their own wedding so they don't have the stress leading up to it," said Stacey Gitten, a chapter spokeswoman. "They can just bask in the moment of their special day and get to this milestone that many feel like they will never get to."
The night Tafoya, a single mom, met Sosa through a mutual friend in 2006, she told her mother that she had met the man she was going to marry. She even found a muscular photo of him that she placed on her computer at work, even though the two were friends who spoke once every few months.
"I just let it happen," Tafoya said. "I said `I'm not going to chase after his guy because he's going to be mine someday.' I just knew it."
Nearly three years later, Sosa asked her out on a date. The two immediately became inseparable even as the illness would hit Sosa particularly hard that year, landing him frequently in the hospital for weeks at a time.
"I feel no matter what, I want to be there right next to him," Tafoya said. "I want to be there by his side. I just never want ... for him to go through it alone."
His life since he was diagnosed, he said, has been a physical and emotional roller coaster.
He was put on the transplant list once before and then taken off after Tafoya, his domestic partner, lost her job and their health insurance.
Sosa has growths in his stomach and behind his spleen, which are periodically checked by doctors for cancer. Doctors are also carefully monitoring a potentially dangerous blood clot near his liver.
At times, he has felt so much pain from his illness, which also inflames his gallbladder, that he has curled up on the bathroom floor in the fetal position.
That's when you know it's bad, Sosa said, since he has a "high tolerance" for pain.
"When I was a kid and people would do things to me, I wouldn't even cry," he said.
Sosa, a former gym rat who loved lifting weights, maintains a strict low-sodium diet to avoid uncomfortable water retention and is prohibited from rigorous exercise or heavy lifting. He takes about 10 different kinds of medicine a day.
"What's weird about this disease, I'll wake up and I'll feel good," he said. "I'll think today's going to be a good day, but you start walking around a little bit and all of a sudden - boom - you hit a brick wall, just real exhausted."
Although Sosa isn't considered sick enough yet to get bumped to the top of the transplant list, he looks forward to having a healthy liver one day and leading a new and very different life with his soon-to-be wife.
"I can't wait to feel normal," he said. "I can't wait to eat like a normal person, where people are enjoying their food."
But in the meantime, he said, he doesn't want people to see him as being sick.
"When I was first sick, I lost 40 or 50 pounds. I would hear in the next room, `Oh my God, he looks horrible," he said. "People were crying, feeling sorry for me. I didn't really want to be remembered as somebody like that. I want them to remember me as positive, as a fighter."
brenda.gazzar@sgvn.com
626-578-6300, ext. 4496
Source: http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/news/ci_20043858?source=rss
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