Health Strides

Wolf Point High School Student Returns To Active Schedule

Wolf Point High School junior Kailayla Villaluz is back to being a pretty busy student after a long hospital stay with a rare disease this summer.

She was diagnosed with severe pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), Group 1. The condition affects the arteries in the lungs and the right side of the heart. PAH has an estimated incidence of only two to four cases per million children.

“I can do everything now except wrestling,” Villaluz said last week. “I found another opportunity and that’s to be a wrestling manager.”

She is playing flag football now and will play tennis again this spring.

“I feel much better,” she explained. “I can breathe going up the stairs now.”

Villaluz said she is taking three different medications and has a continuous pump that she needs to change every three days.

Her journey included an echocardiogram showing that she had a murmur and blockage in the left side of a lung. Because her heart wasn’t pumping enough blood, her lung pressure was really high and prevented enough blood from getting out of her heart. She was life-flighted from Billings to the Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah.

“I’m very grateful,” she said of her medical care. “I had a really great care team in Utah.”

During her hospital stay, the community pulled together will fundraisers such as gun fundraiser drawings, sheriff’s office representatives milking a cow at a ranch rodeo and a dunking tank during Stampede weekend.

“That really brought me a lot of joy because I was in a bed for 23 days,” Villaluz said of the events.

When she returned to Wolf Point, she was especially pleased to see her grandmother and two uncles. A lot of hugs have been exchanged between her and family members and friends.