Supermodel Anok Yai Diagnosed with Congenital Lung Defect

Supermodel Anok Yai has been silently battling a congenital defect that she says is "overworking [her] heart and slowly destroying [her] lungs."

The 28-year-old Victoria's Secret runway model took to Instagram to reveal she's been dealing with this "silent battle" for the last year and underwent surgery to manage it.

Alongside videos of her in a hospital bed, Yai shares, "What started as something asymptomatic for the majority of my life turned into a lingering cough, which turned to chest pains, bouts of coughing up blood, then at times struggling to breathe."

Yai says she chose to work through her pain all while trying to find the right doctor and the right time ... but quickly realized there was never going to be a “right time” and that her health would "continue to worsen."

The style icon also gets vulnerable about how she always thought she could outwork or outrun anything, but notes ... "the universe has a way of slowing you down and waking you up."

She then reveals she had a successful robotic lung surgery ... and takes a moment to thank all her docs.