DENVER — Devin Hays was 18 years old, playing hockey at Iowa State University when a persistent cough and chest pain led to an X-ray that changed his life.

“She was just concerned that I might have some fluid in my lungs from covid or something else,” Hays said. “So, she took a chest X-ray, and she found a softball-sized tumor sitting above my heart and squeezing my trachea.”

He was transferred to HCA HealthONE Rocky Mountain Children’s at Presbyterian St. Luke’s for treatment of the tumor, a type of lymphoma.

“He had a very frightening and dramatic presentation,” Dr. John Van Ninck, an oncologist who helped treat Hays when he arrived in 2022, said. “The large tumor in his chest was compressing his heart and some of his respiratory structures, and so it was a medical emergency.”

Hays h

See Full Page