PORTLAND, Ore. – Chrissy Steltz is recovering at Legacy Emanuel Hospital Thursday after having received the first of three life-changing facial surgeries Wednesday.

After being shot in the face with a shotgun, Steltz was able to breathe through her nasal passages for the first time in 10 years.

“So refreshing, like something that you lost and found again,” Steltz said from her hospital bed. “I can’t quit. It feels so good to breath through the nasal passages.”

Since 1999 she’s been living without her eyes, nose, and part of her face.

Another teenager shot her with a 12-gauge shotgun from 5 ½ feet away, amazingly missing her brain. It occurred at a gathering where underage drinking was taking place and involved a gun that had been stolen in a burglary.

The wounds have been significant for Steltz and have been hidden behind a mask.

“I have a 10-year-old sister, and I have always taught her that beauty is on the inside,” she said.

Eventually, she will be fitted with a prosthetic face.

Her injuries haven’t stopped her from living: she’s been teaching blind children life skills.

“Life is what you make it,” she said.

And now she and her partner, Jeffrey, who’s also blind, are raising their 2-month-old baby boy, which leaves no time for self-pity.

“Just because you have a tragic thing happen in your life, it doesn’t mean that your life is over,” she said.

Steltz is having the surgeries ten years later because the Oregon Health Plan denied her coverage of the procedure because it considered the surgeries to be cosmetic. However, her doctor, Eric Dierks, and others are donating their services.