Running With Heart
By: ABC6 News Staff
Reporting By: Melissa Randall
@MRandallABC6
Watching Austin Prario as he trains for his first Boston Marathon you’d never know the Burrillville teen only has 3 functioning chambers in his heart. It’s a condition called double inlet, single left ventricle with transposition of the greater arteries.
“If I have this shirt on you have no idea that I have a heart condition. I’m must like every body else. That’s what I’m going to try and prove to people,” said Prario.
Austin has had 3 open heart surgeries. The first one took place when he was less than a week old. Doctors at Boston Children’s Hospital alerted his parents early on about the restrictions their son may face.
“One of them had stated, kind of in the context of probably what was going on around, oh he’ll probably be able to participate in recreational sports but never anything really competitive. He could never go ahead and run a Boston Marathon,” said Dave Prario, Austin’s father.
Dave refused to let that be the case. In 1998 he joined a team, and made the journey. His wife, Kara, handed baby Austin to him on Boylston Street.
“We ran the last couple hundred yards holding him up and we got to hoist him up on our shoulders as we crossed the finish line. Not a dry eye in the house,” said Dave.
That moment, and the pictures taken that day, inspired Austin to follow in his father’s footsteps.
“Every day I look at that and I just think of what he had to sacrifice and all they {parents} went through while I had the surgery—and just that I have the best family and parents in the world,” said Austin.
Now at age 19, it’s Austin’s turn. His cardiologist recently gave Austin the green light to run on the ‘Miles for Miracles’ team.
“They put a lot of faith in me—putting someone out there with basically half a heart to run 26.2 miles is a big step,” he explained.
But for the first time that finish line is in sight, and Austin is determined to show others in a similar situation that nothing is impossible.
“All those parents out there and all those kids who don’t think their kid is going to get out of it.”
Austin has committed to raising 5–thousand dollars for his team. If you’d like to help please visit his fundraising page here:
http://fundraise.childrenshospital.org/site/TR?px=1412233&fr_id=1510&pg=personal
© WLNE-TV 2016
