"My Scars Are My Battle Wounds. At Least I Have a Beating Heart." A Story About Conquering a Painful Life Curveball

I will never forget when my hospital door opened and in walked a Cardiovascular Thoracic Surgeon and his team. I was confused. Why was he here? I had just had a scan and I had been waiting for several hours to hear what was wrong. The first thing the nurse said who was with him was “You’re too young to be sick.” I was thinking... “Yes I was too young.

I’m Kayla Stentz. I am strong. I am healthy. I take care of sick people. I don’t get sick. I’ve never even broken a damn finger.”

He put my scans up and I could not believe what I saw. My chest wall looked like it was touching my back. My heart and lungs were being encroached on. No wonder I couldn’t breathe. No wonder I had been having slicing pains in my rib cage. No wonder my whole right breast was hard as a rock and had fallen to the middle of my chest.

I stayed in the hospital another few days processing what I had been told and getting more testing done. I was incredibly overwhelmed and just very emotional. I wasn’t really scared at that time. I was just trying to play everything in my head.

“I would be having the Nuss surgery to correct a major deformity of my chest wall and rib cage. I started researching.”