The Story Behind the Scar
The Story Behind the Scar: Why I Finally Decided to Write My Book
People often ask me about my scar.
It's right there on my chest, something you can't miss. The question is always the same:
I would be checking out at the grocery store, and the clerk would ask, "What happened?"
I usually keep my answer simple: "Heart surgery."
Then comes the next line: "But you're so young."
And they're right. I was young. Young for something so significant, something that altered my life. I rarely elaborate because my story is complicated. It’s not something you can easily summarize in polite conversation at the grocery store.
For years, I ignored the suggestion to share my story in a book. People would say, "You should write this down." My mom said it. Friends said it. Even strangers made similar comments when they heard bits and pieces.
But I always thought, "Why me? People endure far worse. There are many who speak louder or advocate better. What difference would my story make?"
I convinced myself I didn’t need to write it. I didn’t need to revisit it. I didn’t need to explain the scar.
Then something happened that opened my eyes.
If you’ve read my book or if you choose to eventually, you’ll know the name Dr. Miranda. He is the cardiologist who saved my life in 2018.
He is not an emotional man. He delivers information in clear, calm facts. He doesn’t embellish, dramatize, or get sentimental.
At my most recent appointment in August 2025, when he was doing his exam, he listened to my heart and said, “Your heart sounds the best it ever has,” and smiled. I was stunned.
I felt relieved and grateful. What truly stayed with me was what he shared next.
He leaned back from the exam table, almost surprised with himself, and said something "funny" had happened recently, not funny haha, but strange. A patient called in, a Mrs. Johnson, reporting chest pain, signs of infection, and possible valve failure.
His instinct? It was me.
His mind went right back to 2018, to another Friday, to the moment when my life nearly slipped out of his hands. He instructed his nurse to have me come in immediately and began prepping to assemble the care team.
And then — something made him pause.
"Which Mrs. Johnson?" he asked.
A post-surgery check-up in 2020 — one of many moments that shaped my healing long after the operating room
It wasn’t me.
He recounted this in the exam room, almost as if he were replaying the moment. He started recalling the day we met and the exam room we occupied when everything happened in 2018. He mentioned that every time he is on the cardiac ICU floor, he can still remember which hospital room I was in and my family.
Not in a negative way. Not in a "I wish I had done something different" way. But in a way that acknowledged it was a moment that marked all of us.
He expressed how surreal it felt to look at us now, years later, all three of us in that exam room again, but on the other side of a story we barely survived.
Robert and I talked about it all the way home — how much we appreciate Dr. Miranda and, even more, his honesty.
We often discuss patient trauma, but we don’t talk enough about doctor trauma — the burdens they carry, the rooms that linger in their minds, the faces, the emergencies they can’t forget.
It struck me that trauma isn’t one-sided. It affects everyone involved.
For the first time, I understood why so many people had urged me to write a book. Not because my story is the worst, the most dramatic, or the most tragic.
But because it happened, and it left a mark, literally and metaphorically, on everyone who lived through it with me.
Because it mattered. Because it changed things, and it almost ended everything.
After that appointment, I realized something I had pushed away for years: My story isn’t “too long.” It’s just not finished being told.
The scar on my chest isn’t just a reminder of surgery. It’s a reminder of a life rerouted. It reminds me of the people who supported me through it — my family, my care team, and Dr. Miranda. It’s a reminder that I’m still here and that the long story is worth telling.
So, I finally listened. I finally wrote it. Every broken part. Every moment that scared me. Every moment that rebuilt me.
"Built From the Broken" isn’t just about illness. It’s about survival, connection, and how our stories weave into others' lives in ways we may not fully understand until years later.
Maybe people won’t see all of that when they look at the scar on my chest, but if they read my book, they will.
And that’s why I wrote it.
