He was admitted, and doctors there performed blood cultures and drained fluid from his ankle. Bill continued to get sicker, and the decision was made to airlift him to Geisinger's Janet Weis Children's Hospital in Danville, where he was admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) and placed on life support. He would undergo two more operations on his ankle, which was at first thought to be the source of the infection, and another round of blood cultures. He also would undergo an echocardiogram, which is essentially an ultrasound image of the heart.

The tests determined that Bill had staph aureus endocarditis, an infection in his heart. There was bacteria growing on his heart's mitral valve, and when the valve opened and closed, it was spreading the infection throughout Bill's blood stream, infecting his entire body. He would need open heart surgery to remove the bacteria and stop the infection from spreading even more.

"It was a nasty staph," says Michael Ryan, DO, the pediatric infectious disease specialist who treated Bill at Janet Weis Children's Hospital. "Staph aureus endocarditis is very uncommon and has a high mortality rate. This definitely was not trivial. It's every bit as sick as you ever fear your kid will be."

Bill's friends in Dunmore held a Mass for him that evening and prayed for his health. The next morning, Bill underwent open-heart surgery. Bob and Mary Lynn could do nothing during the surgery but wait to hear how their son fared.

"I remember saying, 'Let me get this straight. My son is having open-heart surgery, he's critically ill and he may not make it,'" Mary Lynn recalls. "I wanted to hear them say, 'no,' and they didn't say that."

"There was probably more to it than we knew," Bob says, adding that there also was a point when the infection hit Bill's brain, causing a stroke. 

Neither thought a swollen ankle would have led them to this point. "It's something you never expect," Mary Lynn says. "You never think it could be something so serious."

Fortunately, Bill's open-heart surgery was deemed a success. The vegetation was removed, and the mitral valve was saved. Unfortunately, the pulse in his foot was lost. Part of the vegetation had broken off and caused an embolism in his left big toe, which would need to be amputated.

Days later, Bill still suffered from a high fever. After more tests, it was discovered that his spleen was still infected and would need to be removed. Doctors also found fluid around his heart -- approximately two liters -- that would send him back to the PICU.

"We never thought he was healthy. Every day, it seemed like there was something new," Mary Lynn says.

It would be weeks before Bob and Mary Lynn believed their son would be okay. He hadn't been eating and had dropped from 220 pounds to 160 pounds. A kid with a normally healthy appetite, he started to get hungry around Thanksgiving of 2002 and they knew he was getting better.

Without his toe and with the problems his heart suffered, Bill was told it was likely he would never play football again. Bill's progress continued to surprise everyone, however, and he was cleared to play last fall; he even made it to the All-Conference team. Mary Lynn says she watched him closely at every game, making sure he got up and making sure he was okay.

"He's a young adult now, but we still get concerned," Bob says.

Both Bob and Mary Lynn say they will remember the helplessness of that time, not being able to do anything for their son and not being able to "make it better."

Bill says the doctors and nurses at Janet Weis Children's Hospital were friendly and helped keep his spirits up. He realizes how sick he really was and believes that the support of his friends and family helped him through. He also says he thinks that his ordeal changed his family -- including his parents and siblings.

"It gave us a new perspective," Bob says. "You realize that the small things can be fixed and that you don't have to get upset over them."

Today, Bill is active and healthy with few restrictions. He still has a slight leak in his mitral valve and needs to monitor his diabetes, but he and his family are aware of how far he has come.

"People will ask, 'how did you do this?'" Mary Lynn says. "But we had no option."

"There's no way to prepare for something like this," Dr. Ryan says. "He's lucky to be alive."