Though there were legitimate fears her heart would fail months ago, a Barren County Trojan Academy student has been recovering quickly after receiving the gift of a healthy new heart.

For Kayla Chapman, 14, the realization something was wrong came suddenly in August, when her legs swelled.

“Her legs were so swollen and her feet were so swollen, it was cutting off circulation,” said Kimra Thomas, her adoptive mother.

In retrospect, Thomas said there were some warning signs in the weeks before the swelling was discovered, such as prolonged fatigue, but Thomas wrote it off as normal teenage “growing pains.”

“Everything that was going on with her was completely normal for a teenager until her legs started swelling up,” she said.

Thomas took Kayla to a pediatrician, then an emergency room in Bowling Green, then to Vanderbilt University Medical Hospital in Nashville, where she was diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy.

“It was kind of like her heart was enlarged,” Thomas said. “One side wasn’t pumping enough blood to the other side.”

There, they learned Kayla would need a transplant and that it would probably take six weeks for a suitable heart to become available.

Because Kayla has a genetic condition called epidermolysis, which causes fragile, blistering skin according to the Mayo Clinic website, doctors wanted to avoid a surgical procedure to install a left ventricular assist device prior to the transplant.

“Everything you could do to a normal person, you couldn’t do to Kayla because of her condition,” Thomas said.

Thomas said even medical tape could tear Kayla’s skin when peeled off.

The LVAD surgery was deemed necessary, and after it was conducted, doctors at Vanderbilt could do very little to help the wound heal on its own.

“They stitched her up on the inside and they more or less let the outside lie,” she said, adding that draping a layer of gauze over her torso was about all they could do.

Roughly four weeks after Kayla was put on the heart transplant waitlist, they learned Oct. 13 that a suitable heart had been found.

The knowledge that the heart came from an organ donor who died resulted in some complex emotions when Thomas received the news.

“At the same time, you feel that little twinge of guilt that somebody had to die for her to live,” she said. “You feel guilty, but on the other hand, you feel joyous.”

The transplant itself, which took place Oct. 14, was similarly complicated for Thomas, who said she went back and forth between being happy about the operation and being fearful Kayla might die.

“You’ve got all these emotions,” she said. “You want to be happy, but we’re also not stupid. We knew anything can go wrong.”

Throughout the series of ordeals, from the dilated cardiomyopathy diagnosis to the transplant, to the recovery that is still in progress, Kayla has remained cheerful and confident, Thomas said.

“Kayla is just the most positive person you will ever meet,” Thomas said. “She always stayed positive and faithful. Nothing negative was allowed in her room.”

Kayla, who didn’t say much about her experience, recalled that she was fairly calm through most of the process.

“My nurses and stuff, they helped me get through it and my mom and my dad and my brothers and family and friends,” she said.

Kayla said she’s back home now, continuing to recover.

“I’m up and moving around and stuff,” she said.

Thomas said that while Kayla has mostly stayed at home since the four weeks after the surgery at the Ronald McDonald House in Nashville, her recovery has been quick.

“To look at her, you would never know something was wrong with her,” she said.