AnnArbor.com reports that for the past three years, Kayla Brophy (right, photo from AnnArbor.com) dreamt what this spring would be like. A steady contributor to the Saline High School softball team since she was a freshman, this was her time.

She was going to be a senior captain in the pitching circle. After splitting time with upperclassmen – including her own sister, Lisa, for two years – this year’s Hornet squad was going to be Brophy’s team to put on her shoulders and carry.

It didn’t happen. Instead, she spent February, March and April in a light-headed, queasy-stomached fog. She missed 10 weeks of school. She made numerous trips to the emergency room for intravenous fluids. She took a battery of tests administered by a battery of doctors.

It all started on Jan. 30 when Brophy was suffering from severe flu-like symptoms. Maybe it was the flu. Or maybe it was food poisoning? A virus? Nobody is sure.

But when she turned gray and clammy, Carol and Steve Brophy decided to drive their middle child to the emergency room. When Kayla kept losing consciousness as they tried to put on her shoes, Carol and Steve decided to call an ambulance.

After that night’s scare and a two-day hospital stay, Brophy embarked on a 90-day cycle of continuing illness and frustration. With all tests coming back negative, doctors were left to assume that she was battling a virus or simply needed to wait as her body corrected itself from the loop it was thrown for on Jan. 30.

I wonder if it had anything to do with E. coli O145, which would surface a few months later in Ann Arbor, Michigan.