Up and Running : The Inspiring True Story of a Boy's Struggle to Survive and Triumph

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1: “God, what's going on here?”
Up and Running is a story about comebacks, about doctors who take on one of the most relentless of diseases, and parents who at first lose faith, then use it to will their child to live, even as they struggle with an unraveling marriage.

Chapter 1: “God, what's going on here?”, Part 2
'His perfusion stinks,' Linakis said. He guessed it was more than just circulatory collapse. The heart, hampered by the inflammatory reaction, was not working efficiently. That was predictable. Judging by Andrew's mental state, Linakis figured his brain

On the night of July 3, 1997, young Andrew Bateson, six years old, suddenly feels listless and feverish as he watches holiday fireworks with his family. Twelve hours later, he lies in a coma, near death at Providence's state-of-the-art children's hospital.

The diagnosis is bacterial meningitis, one of the fastest infectious killers known. Andrew is given little chance of survival, but because of a local surge in meningitis cases the prior year, his doctors are among the nation's best at fighting the disease.

Over the next three weeks, the hospital wages a minute-by-minute battle to keep him alive. Overwhelmed, Andrew's parents pull away from each other-common in a pediatric intensive care unit-and their friends wonder if the marriage will survive.

Andrew's father withdraws into anger, questioning God, at one point retreating to the hospital's outdoor garden where he looks toward the sky and shouts, "I hate you. I hate you for this."

In a cinematic, "you are there" style, award-winning journalist Mark Patinkin brings alive the fight to save Andrew. It's a story about comebacks, about doctors who take on one of the most relentless of diseases, and parents who at first lose faith, then use it to "will" their child to live, even as they struggle with an unraveling marriage.

Finally, Up and Running is about a child overcoming loss-with a twist that, were it not true to life, would seem all but impossible.

Mark Patinkin has been a syndicated columnist with the Providence Journal for over twenty-five years. A Pulitzer Prize finalist for international reporting, he won three New England Emmy awards for television commentaries and is the author of several previous books. He lives in Providence with his wife and three children..

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