Daniel Price doesn’t remember the person he was before the illness.

The soccer games, the ski races, the summers spent lifeguarding at Juniper pool — all have slipped his mind.

In his room, at his parents’ house in southeast Bend, a 2007 Bend High School letterman jacket, earned in academics, soccer, lacrosse and ski team, hangs on the closet door. Model planes hang from the ceiling, a reminder of who he was and who he wanted to be.

This week, he turned 22. At 19, after a year at Central Oregon Community College, Daniel moved to Portland to pursue his interest in aviation. He was going to be an airplane mechanic and was enrolled in a program at Portland Community College.

His parents, Amy and Ralph Price, thought him a typical young adult, said Amy. He called every few days but he was busy, going to school full-time and working as a lifeguard at a pool in Tualatin. He wasn’t too interested in telling his parents every detail of his day.

That meant they didn’t think anything was out of the ordinary when he didn’t call for a few days in February 2009.

Daniel had developed a rare but virulent illness that attacked his brain. It came close to killing him and caused massive brain damage.

Daniel will never be the same.

He is a different person, his father Ralph said, and may never be able to live on his own again.

The family may never be the same.

Sibling relationships have been strained, said both parents, as has their marriage. Though they are in the process of reconciling, Amy and Ralph separated in the middle of Daniel’s illness.

The illness, viral encephalitis, can strike at random. The type that Daniel contracted occurs in about three people out of every 1 million.

Often there are warning signs: a headache, fever or stiff neck. Daniel had some of these, but dismissed them as a cold or just the fatigue of a busy schedule.

It’s hard to know when or if he realized it was something more serious. He has no recollection of ever being sick.

The first clue that anyone else had that something was wrong was when his parents got a call from a co-worker at the Tualatin pool.

“Is this Dan’s mom?” said the voice at the other end.

And just like that, everything changed for the Price family.

The phone call

In the back of Amy Price’s mind, there was always a kernel of worry for her son. He was a Type 1 diabetic and, though his condition was well-controlled, she, like any mother of a child with a chronic disease, knew that things could much too easily go wrong.

Still, she didn’t think much about it when Daniel called in February of 2009 complaining of a cold.

Amy, a nurse at St. Charles Bend, talked to him on a Sunday. When he said he felt under the weather, “I asked all the nursey questions,” about temperature and blood sugar, she said.

Daniel didn’t seem concerned, “Oh no. I’m good,” he told her. “I’ve got to work. See ya.”

She didn’t hear from him after that, but assumed the cold was running its course.

The next Tuesday was a typical, hectic weeknight, Amy said. She was making dinner. Her two teenage daughters were home. The television was blaring. When the phone rang, she grabbed it, not expecting that it would take too much time from the evening routine.

That was the call from Daniel’s co-worker in Tualatin.

“Immediately you knew something’s wrong,” she said. The co-worker explained that they were getting worried about Daniel; he hadn’t shown up for work on Sunday or Tuesday.

Amy knew she needed to figure out what had happened between Daniel’s Sunday phone call and his not showing up for work that day. Daniel was living alone in an apartment in Beaverton; his roommate had just moved out and he was in the process of looking for a replacement.

There was no one who had immediate access to the apartment.

Right away, she called both police and the fire department, Amy said. She figured his blood sugars had gotten out of control and he had passed out.

Daniel had an insulin pump, a device that is attached to the body and regulates insulin on a continuous basis. The pump helps control his blood sugar, but accidents can still happen.

The police were reluctant to break in, Amy said, after they saw no signs of foul play. She called the apartment manager, who was hesitant as well. She called a friend from the Tualatin pool, who was willing to drive to Daniel’s apartment but lived far away.

It took cajoling, but both the police and apartment manager finally agreed to go into the apartment. About an hour and a half after her initial call, policemen, the manager and Daniel’s friend had all congregated there.

The family just had to wait for a phone call to see whether Daniel was there and, if so, whether he was still alive.

After 30 long minutes, a policeman called.

“We’re in the apartment. He’s here,” Amy recalls him saying.

“Is he alive?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Is he conscious?”

“No.”

“Where are you taking him?”

“St. Vincent’s” emergency room, the policeman replied.

The hospital

The family, including the Prices’ two teenage daughters, got in the car that night, driving toward Providence St. Vincent Medical Center, where Daniel was being treated.

It was foggy and rainy going over the pass at Government Camp. They couldn’t go faster than 30 miles per hour, said Amy. When they could get cell phone reception, they were in touch with medical staff who were caring for Daniel. A preliminary CT scan had shown a massive stroke, they told her.

Amy remembers them telling her that Dan was barely breathing and needed artificial respiration. His blood pressure was dropping, an indication that he may not make it.

That night, the family slept on the floor of the intensive care unit.

The next morning, Amy said, a neurologist took another look at Daniel’s CT scan. At that point he saw evidence of something more than just a stroke. Lab tests confirmed that the stroke had been caused by viral encephalitis. Doctors put Daniel on a medication to stop the virus from replicating, stifling the infection.

Viral encephalitis is an infection and inflammation of the brain. Several thousand cases are reported in the United States each year.

It can be caused by any one of a number of viruses and, in Daniel’s case, was caused by a herpes virus, the same one that causes cold sores.

Though many of us have this virus in the body, it typically stays out of the brain. But every once in a while, for reasons we don’t understand, it crosses the barrier between our blood and brain tissue, said Dr. Laura Schaben, a neurologist in Bend who treats Daniel. There, it can wreak havoc.

If left untreated, about 70 percent of those who contract viral encephalitis will die. Even with treatment, one in five will not make it, Schaben said. Of those who survive, about half have severe brain damage.

“Herpes (-caused) encephalitis invades the temporal lobes,” Schaben said. Those areas of the brain are crucial for banking memories and regulating emotions. The virus can damage brain tissue in those areas, leaving people without fundamental functions.

“If you get herpes encephalitis,” said Schaben, “it’s always bad.”

For Daniel, it was grave. An already bad prognosis was made worse because he had likely been unconscious for days before he was found.

He lay in an intensive care unit at St. Vincent’s, completely unresponsive and unable to eat or breathe on his own.

The swelling in the brain creates pressure and threatened to damage Daniel’s brain even further. Doctors removed a large piece of his skull, almost the entire side of his head.

When the medical team discussed options, Amy said, and couched choices with language like “the outcomes look really poor.” The family contemplated taking him off life support.

Family and friends flew in from all over the country, thinking it was the last time they would see Daniel alive.

For the most part, Amy and Ralph lived in the hospital for weeks.

They would sit by Daniel’s bed or read to him. They ate nearly every meal in a small cafeteria, about 20 feet away from the ICU.

At night they went back to Daniel’s apartment in Beaverton.

One day, Amy said, she was sitting in the car, parked in Daniel’s garage. At the end of sanity, she called a friend in Bend. “I said, ‘I don’t think he’s going to make it. I think he’s getting ready and all these people are coming in because we have to say goodbye.’”

“I understand that and I’m OK with that,” she told her friend. “And God and I are OK with that. But right now, I just need to scream and I need to scream with someone because I’m going to lose my kid.”

Coming back

But slowly, Daniel started to improve.

First, it was just a fluttering of the eyelids. After three weeks, he could follow simple commands and lift his fingers off the bed. “That was huge,” said Amy.

After a month in Portland, Daniel was transferred to St. Charles Bend via ambulance. He was still unconscious but the pressure in his head had eased and his fevers weren’t spiking so high.

The family brought him home in a hospital bed, still only barely conscious, in May 2009.

At that point, he was able to breathe on his own but couldn’t eat, walk or hold himself up. A large piece of Daniel’s skull was still missing (it was replaced this summer) and he had to wear a helmet.

At first, Amy said, he spent about 23 hours a day sleeping. His time awake gradually increased and he became more aware of his surroundings.

“It was like an infant,” Amy said. “You start to sit up, hold your head up and then you try to stand.” He took his first steps, on the carpet at home, with a person on each side and another supporting his back, in June 2009.

By fall, he was beginning to be more independent. But, as is common with brain injuries and particularly injuries in which areas regulating emotion and behavior are affected, he began acting strange. Emotional outbursts were common. He bit his mother, once clamping down on her nose with such force it left tooth marks.

He ate objects; at home it was potpourri and candles. Daniel’s medical records note that “occupational therapy is limited by his frequent attempts to eat the materials presented to him.”

Then, as his brain healed, the inappropriate phase passed as quickly as it had begun. In the spring, Amy said, she began to feel more confident about going out in public with Daniel. He had regained most of his physical abilities, and was able to kick a soccer ball or run just as he had before.

The family had tried to put him in an adaptive skiing program, where instructors are trained to help those who are disabled. Daniel was a better skier than the instructors and terrified them by taking off on the sides of runs, flying off jumps.

“He just needs a friend to go with,” they told Amy. “He doesn’t need us.”

Expectations

Daniel harbors no bitterness or resentment or anger over his illness.

Amy doesn’t know exactly why, but guesses it has to do with the brain damage. “Maybe because he just doesn’t remember what he had, that truly is a gift.”

Daniel himself says that, too. “I’m not upset that I had the injury,” he said, in somewhat halting speech. He spends a lot of time at his church now and said the injury has helped him get closer to God.

He also said he enjoys helping people. Daniel regularly volunteers at Pine Ridge Elementary School in Bend, where his father works in building maintenance. He recycles cans at the Albertsons grocery store near his house and, while there, often helps people carry their groceries to the car.

Acknowledging that he can be upfront, Amy laughs. “I’m afraid we’re going to get a call from the manager.”

Daniel uses rhymes to remember words and concepts, often reciting facts of his daily life in an upbeat, sing-song tone. For the maintenance worker at church, who he sometimes helps, Daniel said, “His name is Dean. I help Dean clean.”

Daniel went on, explaining his method. “To me, rhyming is definitely not a crime. It helps preserve time.”

And, he takes pride in little victories. He recently has learned the city bus schedules well enough to get to medical appointments on his own.

One day, Amy said, he got on the wrong bus. He asked the bus driver for directions and she helped him. He made it on his own.

“When I got lost, I asked.” he said, smiling and giving a thumbs-up sign, something he also does often.

Earlier on in Daniel’s recovery, “he could no more have (found his way to the clinic) than fly to the moon,” said Dr. Robert Pinnick, who treated Daniel with hyperbaric oxygen therapy at Bend Memorial Clinic this year. Since he began seeing him, Pinnick said, “Daniel has gotten a lot better in terms of memory, problem solving, all that.”

Pinnick was careful to say that he does not know if the hyperbaric oxygen therapy, in which patients are submersed in an oxygen-rich environment for a set amount of time and have dozens of sessions, caused the improvement or whether Daniel just needed time.

Amy said she doesn’t know if Daniel will continue to recover or whether he’s where he will stay. She hopes that he has an independent life filled with his own family, she said, but she’s learned not to expect those things.

“You don’t compare what you have or what you are today to what you were then or what you wanted to be. Those are gone,” said Amy. “Today, we don’t have any expectations beyond what we are going to do today.”