When Andrew Herring, a brown university student and Varsity pumpkin player, came with a case of mono, caused by the Epstein-Barr virus, he thought nothing about it. He felt completely healthy on a day and the next day he was just a bit under the weather. He had some symptoms, such as fatigue, but they were not serious.
“It’s everyone -virus, you know?” He said, when he discussed how non-serious he thought his illness was.
But then things took a dark turn and fast. Andrew turned completely yellow. His liver failed. And then he slid into a coma, all within a few days.
“It happened incredibly fast,” said Andrew, a resident of Toronto. “I went to an eight-day coma, and really, it is so traumatic in the brain that when I arrive, everything I can remember, goes to the hospital and then wakes up from my coma post-operation.”
It is not typical that the Epstein-BARR virus causes liver failure, but in some cases it can attack from the body ribonucleic acid, necessary for cell function, And make more virus particles. The immune system tries to defend itself against the virus, but destroys liver cells in the process so quickly that it cannot function.
He spent a little more than a week in the Toronto General Hospital, and at that time his illness became so serious that his name shot to the top of the donor list for a new liver, making him the number 1 of the liver transplantation of Canada. He received one while he was in a coma, and when he woke up, he did this with a new scar and a new future, and no memory of what had happened.
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