“Get that child to the hospital RIGHT NOW.” Those were the words that rang in my mother’s ears when she picked up the phone at midnight in the winter of 1984. She all but threw my father out of bed as they hastily got dressed, told my older brother to hold down the fort (he was 13), scooped me up (I was 5 years old at the time), and carried me to the car. I’d had a fever of 102 or above for three straight days. What seemed like an ordinary seasonal bout of the flu turned out to be…