Nobody ever thinks they're going to be diagnosed with a major illness or disease, but it's an unfortunate reality for some.
At 16 years old, Mikayla Grace started having serious health problems.
Eventually, she was diagnosed with a number of heart problems, including lupus, POTS syndrome, Tachy Brady syndrome, multiple structural heart defects, thyroid disease, and mild chiari malformation, among others.
Last year, doctors told Mikayla that a pacemaker would help fix her heart, so she underwent surgery. A week after the procedure, she was discharged. She thought she'd start getting better.
Sadly, Mikayla's health instead took a turn for the worse. A few days after being discharged, she started having pain at the site of her new pacemaker. Days later, she'd become completely debilitated.
Recently, Mikayla decided to share her story on the Facebook page Love What Matters, where it got a lot of attention. Within two days, the post had over 9,000 reactions.
After sharing her post on Love What Matters, Mikayla was blown away by the support she received.
Over 800 people commented on her story, and 636 people shared it.
Mikayla wrote:
One year ago today, I had my first pacemaker implanted, which was one out of multiple surgeries to fix my heart.
It was supposed to help save my life and instead did the complete opposite. I was discharged a week later to recover from multiple surgeries.
I was only home a few days before I started having pain at my pacemaker site. Within two days, I was completely disabled—unable to move, eat, drink or go to the bathroom.
Part of me knew I was dying. I was taken to the hospital where I stayed for three days, nearly unresponsive and hanging on by a thread.
I was transferred to Orlando where they discovered my heart valve was infected; I had gotten hospital acquired staph from the pacemaker implantation—a rare complication.
What was supposed to save me almost killed me. I had severe endocarditis and was septic.
They removed my pacemaker the day after Thanksgiving, which caused the infection to pour into the rest of my body. My heart valve threw septic pulmonary emboli into my lungs.
My kidneys started to fail and the rest of my body started to follow. I gained 40 pounds of fluid within 48 hours. During all of this I also had to fight through pneumonia from the infection going into my lungs.
Just when I started going in the right direction, I started spiking fevers again. At this point, the doctors resorted to praying. They’d come into my room, looking defeated, not even able to promise things would get better. So they crossed their fingers and prayed.
I fought to breathe, every breath choking me as I drowned in my own lungs. I don't know how many times I cried, 'Mommy I can't do this, I want to go home.'
After a few weeks, the doctors decided I could continue the fight from home because laying in the hospital for months more wasn’t going to help—plus there was nothing left they could do for me, the rest was up to my body.
It was almost Christmas and I begged and hoped to get to be home with my family and celebrate. I even had a mini Christmas tree in my hospital room.
I got a Hickman line in my chest due to my veins being destroyed and going through two IVs a day, and my treatments were every six hours for three months.
When I got out of surgery for the Hickman placement, my site began to bleed uncontrollably. I bled for two hours straight before we got it under control, resulting in critically low blood levels and a blood transfusion.
But, I still got to continue my treatments from home a couple weeks later; which made me ecstatic! I soaked up every bit of Christmas I could and time with my family and friends.
From then on, the most important thing to me was to LIVE my life and do things that made me happy! It's all made me that much stronger.
When I feel I can’t take anymore [sic] pain and suffering, I mange [sic] to—one day after another. That alone shows me I have so much more strength than I ever knew was there!
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