After coming down with a sore throat, 16-year-old Alé was diagnosed with mono. Doctors expected it to clear up quickly, but after several days of bed rest at home, his condition got worse rather than better. Faced with a painful sore throat, constant coughing, and a nosebleed, Alé’s mom decided to take him to the emergency room. Alé wound up at CHRISTUS Children’s Hospital with a 104-degree fever, and after just one night, his spleen became so inflamed he was transferred to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU). In the PICU, critical care specialists saw he was struggling to breathe and decided to intubate him. This meant placing Alé in an induced coma while a ventilator took over his breathing. Once they regulated his breathing, doctors realized mucus was blocking his airway and inserted a tracheotomy to provide a direct airway to the lungs. Then doctors discovered Alé didn’t just have mono but also had necrotizing fasciitis, a severe, rare bacterial infection that kills tissue. The hospital kept Alé on breathing assistance and provided life-saving medication to cure the infection. A few weeks later, the doctors brought Alé out of the medically induced coma, and he was breathing on his own again. Now, Alé is back in school and plans to play football in the fall! While those few weeks were some of the scariest times for him and his family, his amazing care team helped them all through it. Today, Alé has a brand-new outlook on life, wanting to take advantage of every opportunity that comes his way.