When Ofir Sarahan last spoke to his high school classmate Stephanie Kuleba on Wednesday, she told Sarahan she was planning a visit with her mother to UF, to which she was recently accepted. But she never got the chance.
Kuleba, an 18-year-old West Boca High School senior died Saturday due to complications related to breast surgery performed Friday.
Autopsy results are not yet available, but Kuleba's death could be linked to malignant hyperthermia, a hard-to-detect genetic condition that can be triggered by certain anesthetics, according to reports from the Palm Beach Post.
Sarahan, also a West Boca High School senior, said Kuleba was always there for her friends.
"If I called her at 3 o'clock in the morning to come help me with something, she would be the first person there," he said.
He said they met on the first day of Spanish class freshman year, and she was always willing to help him with schoolwork.
After he missed 10 days of chemistry class, Kuleba studied with him at Starbucks for two nights straight to help him pass a test. He got an 'A.'
He said Kuleba's death has brought the West Boca senior class together - what she would have wanted, he added.
However, some students resent the emphasis on her elective surgery, he said. She was undergoing plastic surgery to correct asymmetrical breasts and inverted nipples.
Dr. John Tyrone, a Gainesville plastic surgeon, said that type of surgery is common among young women ages 18 to 20.
Breasts are usually fully developed by then, and many women want to correct the asymmetry, which Tyrone likened to a "congenital birth defect."
He said it's important to realize that if Kuleba's death was due to malignant hyperthermia, it was unrelated to the type of surgery she was having.
"Just because she was young, that had nothing to do with it," Tyrone said. "Just because she was having breast surgery, that doesn't have anything to do with it."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
