I never realized how fast your life can change until this summer. Within a week, my summer went from the most exciting and life-altering experience of my life to the most traumatic. There are three parts to this story; family bonding, college life and ICU sleepovers. My summer started off with my annual month long trip to Hawaii, only this time it was better than normal.. For two out of the four weeks I was on the trip, I was with my family. My brother, Billy McCoy, and my “brother from another mother,” Nate Novak were going to be by my side. We hiked up mountains for miles, swam with sharks and tried the most disgusting foods you can imagine. We tried pig ear cartilage, cow stomach, blood pudding and that’s just the tip of our adventurous iceberg. It was the best time of my life for two reasons: spending quality time with my brothers and being crazy enough to let loose for a while. After our two weeks were up, Billy and Nate flew back to good ole’ Pittsburgh and headed off on a trip to Canada with Nate’s family. I spent my remaining two weeks lying on the beach, soaking up sun and reading as many books as I could get my hands on. I’m the type of girl that reads a 400-page book a day and has a mother actually scolds me for buying more books. Maybe I should get a library card. Once I returned home, I saw my family members for less than 24 hours, just long enough to pack all of my things. My reason for packing was that I’d accepted an invitation to be in a summer program at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California for Law and Trial. I went from my 14-hour flight experience from Hawaii straight to my 11-hour cancellation and lay-over filled trip to Cali. I spent 10 glorious days staying in a crappy dorm room at one of the most prestigious colleges in the United States. I attended seminars and about four boring lectures per day. I ate the disgusting college food, and I even hung out with the students on campus. I went to a myriad of classes and made lifetime friendships, all while earning college credit. I also had the opportunity to visit my dream college: UC Berkeley. I don’t know if I was more nervous about swimming with those Hawaiian sharks or making a good first impression with the professors. Later in the trip, I participated in a mock trial, which is the most interesting thing I’ve ever done. It felt as if I was actually involved in a murder case, and I loved it. It made my mind up about my career path. I definitely want to go into the law field. Even though it was my first college experience away from home, I felt like I’d never want to leave. I was grateful, however, that I would be able to go see my family for longer than a few hours during the summer. Unfortunately, I got home, and became sick. At the same time, my parents went on an anniversary vacation. While on vacation, my brother Billy also became ill and I took care of him. He refused to go to the doctor when we thought he had tonsillitis, and that’s when my summer started to go downhill. When my parents returned, we rushed Billy to the family doctor for tests, taking days for results. Two days later, we took him to Beaver Medical Center after he hadn’t eaten more than a few strawberries and a bite of toast during the previous seven days. On Wednesday, August 22, the Medical Center diagnosed my brother with mono and sent him home with his symptoms tagging along. It was a dire mistake, which I don’t take lightly. The worst happened that Sunday, August 26, when Billy was rushed to Sewickley Hospital by ambulance. When the ambulance came to pick him up, he was a sickly gray color. The paramedics explained that he was taking 80 breaths per minute and that his blood pressure was as close to death as they have ever seen. Once Billy was taken to Sewickley Hospital we learned that in the four days since he’d been to the hospital and released, he had developed double pneumonia. My ears were ringing until one phrase brought me back to reality: “I’m sorry, but this has blossomed into heart failure.” Could it be? My health-freak 20-year-old brother could be going into heart failure? Through my tears, I could see the doctor’s solemn face as he told my parents that Sewickley Hospital wouldn’t be able to care for my big brother. With a portable ventilator in tow, a sedated Billy flew down the highway in an ambulance going 90 mph the whole way to Allegheny General Hospital (AGH). The doctors at AGH told us that Billy was the sickest patient in the entire hospital and that he had a better chance of dying than living. That Monday was a rough day; my brother had made it through the night, but only by the skin of his teeth. They came in at 3 a.m. to tell us to call in all of our family members because Billy wasn’t going to make it. We had relatives booking tickets while we were sobbing on the phone. That was when I told Nate how serious the situation had gotten. Nate and a few of his other friends came in to see Billy while they could. I had been a wreck; I thought I had shed as many tears as my ducts could possibly handle. My face was dry, but then I saw Nate walk through the elevator. He came over to hug me, and I completely lost it as I saw the tears rolling down his rosy cheeks. Luckily, Billy ended up making it through the night, amazing each of his doctors. We were fighting his unknown illness for another day. He struggled through sedation, breathing tubes, arterial ports, collapsed lungs, catheters, blood clots, IVs and everything else you could think of until Wednesday, August 29. By this time, he had undergone multiple chest x-rays and cat scans per day. He had over nine procedures before we found the answer we’d been looking for. Billy was diagnosed with a rare disease called Lemierre’s Syndrome. Only one doctor in the entire twelve-story hospital knew of the disease, and it was Billy’s doctor, Dr. Lance Wells. This man single handedly saved my brother’s life. As I sat up restless on the ICU floor throughout the nights, I could see Dr. Wells writing. He had written a list of every disease possible that my brother could have. Two days before the cultures grew into Billy’s disease, Dr. Wells had already started treating him. To give you an idea of how rare Lemierre’s syndrome is, only 19 people were diagnosed with it in the United States last year. Due to the rarity, 18 out of 20 people diagnosed are fatal cases. The disease shuts down your organs, and the bacteria filled Billy’s chest with liquid and his lungs with a plethora of holes. On August 30, the nurse came out and said, “Someone wants to see you.” I watched my brother open his eyes for the first time in days. He was able to do the neurological testing , including hand-squeezing, toe-wiggling and giving a thumbs-up. The hardest part of the situation was seeing the tears flow from my big brothers eyes and knowing that there was nothing I could do to help him. And Saturday, September 1 took the cake for the most traumatic event of my life. I had to make the decision to leave my critically ill brother at the hospital to go euthanize his 12 year old dog, which he sleeps with every night and loves to death. When he got his breathing tube out on September 3, the first thing he asked was, “Are the dogs being good?” and my heart sunk into the pit of my stomach. We’ve decided not to tell him until he gets out of the hospital in a few weeks, because we want him to take the blow when he’s back to his healthy self. Finally, I told him how much I loved him and he said the phrase that made all of our useless fighting worth it: “I love you, too.”’ We thought he was out of the woods after we had a 17-day sleepover in AGH. Billy told me I had to go back to school and get back into the swing of things, but that was a terrible decision. I went to school for an entire red day. I tried to manage getting bombarded with questions and starting more of my make-up work. The next day, I decided to keep my phone in my purse; Billy told me I would love Psychology. I almost got to the end of class when the phone call came. Mrs. Porter answered the phone and told me that my brother was being rushed into emergency lung surgery. I obviously left at the same moment I heard, and got to the hospital in record time. I saw his sunken face for a few minutes before he got rolled into the operating room. His two and a half hour surgery lasted over six hours as they peeled and scraped at his lung until the thoracic surgeon was satisfied. Between his arm position and his ribs being spread apart within his six inch incision, he couldn’t move his left arm for three days. Now he seems to be on the right track and healing up nicely, and I’m making up over two weeks of school. For the first time in 21 days, I saw him walk. He had to have a little help, but it was the most inspiring thing I’ve ever witnessed. One of the first places he walked was over to the scale. Billy was already a skinny guy before Lemierre’s Syndrome took hold of him, but he’d lost a whopping 32 pounds. At 6 ft tall, my brother only weighs 124 pounds. He said how amazed he was at how quickly his muscles have deteriorated. I’m just glad we got to spend so much time together at the beginning of the summer and that I had those memories to think about during the hard times. Now, I don’t know anyone else who would have had the strength to get through this ordeal, and that’s why Billy isn’t just my brother, but also my hero. People in the medical field keep telling me that they are surprised he is still here. I tell them I’m not; I knew he was a fighter. After all, one of his doctors did say “he’s sick as snot, but tougher than a two dollar steak.”