I Can Do It With A Broken Heart

Left: Present-day Camila | Right: Taken after her second surgery.

“I’ve had three open heart surgeries,” I say to a room full of small shocked faces. Their mouths agape as some level of interest and respect flashes across their traditionally glazed eyes. I’m eight and this is my fun fact on the first day of class. In fact, from this point on, it always will be. I like the look my classmates give me when they find out. At least for the next few minutes, as students try to locate my scar or stare at me with intrigue, I feel important. And I like feeling important. 

See, at my small age, my heart condition is more of a novelty than a cautionary tale. I don’t fully understand its implications yet, and since I wasn’t really “there” when it all went down, I just get to reap the benefits of it. I pull it out like a hat trick. A quick way to separate myself from the other, less interesting, students. I stand out. Teachers marvel at my existence. One even points me out in Theology Class, telling everyone that today they’re meeting a real live miracle. More than anything, I like the feeling of confidence that floods through me afterward. I’m a badass. Every birthday is a milestone, a sign of my success. And I love my scar. 

Child Camila with her brother Cristian.

This is a unique thing that only really comes with having a congenital condition. I was “born” with my scar. I got it eight months into my life during my second surgery. So to me, as my mom has said since I came into consciousness, my scar is beautiful. It’s a part of me. A line right in the middle of my chest spreading from my collarbone all the way down to the bottom of my ribs. It’s perfect, and when I’m older I can wear crop tops and low-cut dresses to show it off. But right now, at the age of eight, I just love the attention it gets me. 

And sympathy. Pity really. The way the bullying ebbs whenever people take notice of it. Or the phrases I’ve heard all my life “don’t say that, she has a heart condition”. The kids in my class use it as a sign that they’re a good person. They would never bully a kid with a bad heart. And if you do, there’s something fundamentally wrong with you. Teachers let things slide more, if I miss a ton of class for a heap load of cardiology appointments in fifth grade, or get really sick with pneumonia. They know there’s a difference. They know I’m special. And I like being treated as such. 

In fact, I love my heart condition. I love my bi-annual stress tests, where I get to run around and afterward get to add a new heart pillow to my collection. I love Texas Children’s Hospital, especially the fancy play area on level 8, a strange enclosed room with sloped walls you can walk on, or run up to try and touch the roof. And I love the fact that since TCH takes at least over an hour in the waiting room I get to play in there a lot. I love when my brother scares me and I get to make a big show, exclaiming that my heart is racing, and my mom storms in all upset at him. And sure, there are negatives, but I don’t really understand them, let alone attribute them to my heart condition. Kids are hospitalized at least twice per year usually, right?

The only thing I don't like is the flicker of sadness that crosses adults' faces when they learn of my condition. It’s like they know something I don’t. Sure there are theoretical negatives. Like learning since the technology used for my surgery was so new, I don’t technically have a known life expectancy. Which makes sense since the surgery was so new, before my surgeon came to TCH, they didn’t even preform it. Or learning that having biological children is actually very dangerous for me, though in all honestly this one is kind of a positive. 

Camila at 20, living in NYC.

I’ve always been scared of giving birth, and not having a biological clock ticking down really opens up one’s calendar. 

COVID-19 might as well have been the Fire Nation with the way it went and changed everything. I entered it at 23, a confident hardworking junior living in a cramped 787 sqft Brooklyn apartment with my mom, my small Yorkie Crystal, and in a (now remote) long-term relationship. I “left” COVID-19, if that’s what we’re calling it, in a different (though much better) relationship, living in Austin, painfully dogless and with mental health issues that have still left me reeling. 

In other words, COVID-19 irrevocably changed my entire life. 

It was the first time I ever felt the full impact of my heart condition. I was scared. Immunocompromised. Vulnerable in ways my youth had prevented me from realizing. This virus was targeting my entire existence, and as my mother and I took every safety precaution we could so I..ya know…wouldn’t die. I grew more and more dismayed at the world I was living in. The Vanessa Hudgens, the people who could care less if I died, as long as they got to go on pretending life was normal. It broke something in me. Some final shred of faith I had in the world. In our country. And try as I might, there was no way to get it back. 

I didn’t see my brother or father for over a year and a half. We were quarantined in our tiny New York City apartment from March 2020 to April 2021, when we finally moved to Austin. I lived every day in fear. I had to say goodbye to my dog, my favorite soul in the entire world, wearing 3 masks, a face shield, gloves, and through walls of plastic. And some sick part of me wondered if I would be joining her sooner than I wished. I woke up daily hearing my mom on the phone with morgues, trying to fix the trucks filled with bodies on the streets of New York. 

Bodies dead from a virus that was just outside our doors. And if it wasn’t for my now partner of three years keeping me company, I truly think I would have lost my mind. In a lot of ways I did. 

I started to think about all those faces, those looks of sadness or pity the adults would give me when I’d brag about my heart. How I would dismiss them so frivolously. I loved my heart condition I’d said. I loved how unique it made me, how strong I knew I was, skipping lines in Disney and getting to sit out gym class. But now, at the age of 26, I fear I understand that look all too well. 

Camila as a kid.

It wasn’t judgment, some underestimation as I’d always assumed—it was fear. Cause they knew, what little me had no way of knowing. That my fractured heart was more than just a fun fact to share in class. It meant a lifetime of worrying. Medical bills. Doctors appointments. Potential future surgeries. Limitations. Sensitivity. Danger. It meant not being able to travel to places of high altitude*. Having people constantly underestimating me, or thinking I was too “sick” to do something. It meant that when a global pandemic happens, I would be the person my family prayed for. I would be the most vulnerable. I would have to wear masks from then on. And that though I lived for live music, now when I sang along in a crowd, the artist would never know cause my face would be covered. And even if I got that fated virus, like I did in 2023, and did just fine, I would still have to be hospitalized, just to make sure I remained okay. 

They knew a truth I was so innocently blind to. But being aware now, to be honest, feels like a full betrayal of my younger self.  

Of that confident little girl who didn’t see the limitations, and only knew of the possibilities. Cause I love my heart condition god damn it. I love that it makes me different. And it makes everything I do 1000 times more impressive at no cost to me. That it makes me more knowledgeable and careful, and therefore safer. That it makes those around me have to be genuinely good people who care deeply about my wellbeing. And I still love my scar. I was born with it. I love aligning my bras with it, and wearing even lower-cut things now that I’m an adult, and I still love feeling important. 

Camila Now!

And yes, it sucks. Sure, there are a million negatives, but they are for me to shoulder. For me to process, and hold onto, not for you to place limitations on. Assume I can’t do, so you don’t even ask, assume I’m too sick, so you stray away. In so many ways I’m still that little kid, just aching to prove the world wrong, and it’s infuriating because Taylor Swift is absolutely right, I can do it with a broken heart, and I do it every damn day. 

*High altitude can be a risk for patients who have undergone the Fontan Procedure.