After a life-saving liver transplant at 17, the Brown University senior and standout squash player has embraced a life driven by resilience, community and gratitude.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] - During his senior year of high school, Andrew Herring started feeling under the weather. Assuming it was a common cold - it was December in Toronto, after all - he didn't think much of it. But as his symptoms worsened, he went to the hospital.
"When I got there, I turned completely yellow, and the doctors diagnosed end-stage acute liver failure," said Herring, now a senior at Brown University. "The next thing I remember is waking up from a hepatic coma eight days later with a transplanted liver."
Over the course of just six days, Herring went from a healthy 17-year-old to the highest priority on the donor list for a liver transplant in all of Canada. A match was quickly found, and Herring, whose doctors said was just hours from death, was saved. The culprit was mononucleosis, caused by the Epstein-Barr virus. Nicknamed the "everybody virus," Epstein-Barr is incredibly common - what's not common was Herring's rapid and severe deterioration.
"What happened with me was an estimated one-in-50-million chance," he said. "I was brought back from the very brink … I have this saying now: 'You only live twice.'"
