“So that was in May of her seventh-grade year, and then by September of her eighth-grade year, we were having a transplant.” It may have been fast, but Isla says she could feel it coming. “I started feeling sicker a couple of years prior to us finding out,” she says. “I was stuck with living with being sick all the time.” She struggled with lightheadedness and dizziness and sometimes she struggled with breathing. The family was shocked with the news of the transplant, but deep down, Isla was happy to have an answer for how she was feeling, and a plan to fix it. “It’s kind of weird but it was really like a relief,” she says. “For a long time, I just felt like nobody really understood. I would say my symptoms and people would tell me it was anxiety.” “I knew it was not, but it was so frustrating to go that long like feeling like that like.” “I thought I was gonna feel like that for the rest of my life.” Fortunately for Isla, the team at Vanderbilt Children’s Cardiology was not going to let that happen. They were ready to get moving on her care plan, and they brought her into the conversation every step of the way. “I had the best doctors ever,” she says. “They were super supportive.” “We had multiple meetings to talk about it to make me feel comfortable and to make me not be so scared.” Holly was impressed with the care that the team took with Isla throughout the process. 76 SEPTEMBER 2026 | INTHEVUE.COM “Because of her age, her doctors were phenomenal with talking to her on an adult level and putting the responsibility of the decision with her because it’s her body and she’s the one that has to maintain her medications for the rest of her life,” she says. “So they were very upfront with her, included her in the entire process, and gave her as much description as she wanted.” “She lives in the Google age, so she had been researching and looking at things and she would have questions - really, really good questions for them - and they were just great at working with her and explaining things.” For Isla, at the end of the day, what mattered most was that she didn’t feel in the dark throughout the process. And while it may have been the doctors who patiently answered all of her questions, it was the nurses who cared for her during her 10-day hospital stay that really stood out for Isla. “I know how scared I was, and I know how much I loved my nurses,” she says. “It was really nice having nurses that got to know me more than just took IVs and drew blood.” Isla is betting on being one of those nurses for a future heart transplant patient one day. But, for now she is still busy getting used to her new heart. She is still adjusting medications and going to regular doctor appointments with regular tests. She’s hoping that she can stretch her time between visits soon to every three months. But, for now, Isla is able to focus on all of that - and the nursing classes and the hall passes and the backpacks and the school friends - because of one pretty simple fact. “Now, I feel better,” she says. One of the things that got Isla through was listening to her favorite praise songs by SEU Worship. “What a God” and “Forgiving God” were on when they took Isla back for surgery and she even bonded with her heart transplant mentor over a shared love of the music. The pair of teens were even able to catch a concert together after Isla’s surgery. Listen to find inspiration yourself today. Isla with her parents, Chad and Holly
