Supermodel Anok Yai has revealed that she has been diagnosed with a congenital lung defect that is “straining the heart and slowly destroying the lungs”.
“For the past year, I have been dealing with this silent battle,” Yai, 28, wrote in an Instagram post on Friday, along with several clips of her recovering in the hospital.
Noting that she had been “asymptomatic for most of my life,” the model told her followers that she discovered her health problem after developing a “prolonged cough.”
“(The cough) turned into chest pain, severe vomiting of blood, and sometimes difficulty breathing,” she recalled.
“I chose to work through this while trying to find the right doctor and the right time. I quickly realized there was never a ‘right time’ and my health would continue to deteriorate.”
Although she initially believed that she could “work it out or get over it” with her problems, she soon realized that “the universe has a way of slowing you down or waking you up.”
She continued: “Yesterday, thanks to Dr. Robert Sarforio and his kind and talented team, I was able to undergo successful robotic lung surgery. I am forever grateful for giving me more time.”
According to the American Lung Association, robotic thoracic surgery is “a type of minimally invasive surgery used for thoracic surgery for some cases of lung cancer.”
“It can be used to remove diseased lung tissue and possibly surrounding lymph nodes.”
“I am forever grateful to Dr. Harmik Soukiasian and everyone at @beverlyhillsconciergehealth for discovering my condition,” Yai continued, thanking her medical team.
She gave a special thanks to the nurses at NYU Langone Hospital where she was treated, and to her friends and family who were “the first things I saw when I woke up.”
“For now, I’m healing…but I’ll be back,” she concluded. “see you.”
