As a child she nearly lost her life to a rare condition. Today, at 26, she is defying the odds

EDITOR’S NOTE: “Overcoming the Odds” is a series celebrating everyday people who battle extraordinary adversities with honesty, courage and resilience.

Olivia DeKold has been fighting for her life since she was born.

“She would nurse and nurse then just vomit the breastmilk up, volumes of it,” said Olivia’s mother, Sheila Zeidler. “We started solids and she would try to eat, but it was chronic constipation, chronic vomiting.

“She was very thin, but her belly was just so distended,” Sheila said. “We were giving her enemas — eight, nine enemas a day.”

Just before Olivia’s second birthday, doctors finally discovered the cause — digestive failure due to an incurable genetic condition that historically killed 25% of those afflicted, often in childhood.

Surgeons removed her colon, creating three openings in her abdomen to vent waste and ease the swelling and cramps that had overtaken her body. Tubing implanted near her heart now delivered nutrition 12 hours a day for the rest of her life.

That lifeline, however, left her dangerously exposed to pathogens. Olivia nearly died at eight, spent weeks in hospitals battling fevers and infections, and endured a succession of surgeries. She may need one more — a high-risk, multi-organ transplant of her liver and digestive system.

Yet Olivia, now 26, is flourishing. She is happily married and planning a family. She’s travelled throughout the Western United States and spent 10 days exploring London, carrying with her the medical supplies and vigilance needed to stay alive. An avid hiker, backpacker and camper, she has even skied, kayaked and run a 5K — feats which require extraordinary stamina and resolve for someone with her condition.

“She’s a total firecracker. Olivia’s gotten more out of life so far than most people, and that is through pure conscious willpower,” her childhood friend Keta Jeaux told CNN. “She chooses every day how she’s going to live her life.”

That fierce determination is also evident to the doctors who have treated her for years.

“Olivia never gives up. She manages her condition and doesn’t let it define who she is,” said her surgeon, Dr. Paul Wales, surgical director of intestinal rehabilitation at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Ohio.

Olivia’s story is one of hope, perseverance and bravery. Yet it echoes the stories of millions of people who battle rare and chronic diseases, unexpected injuries and life-challenging setbacks every day.

Just how does one defy the odds while living with constant adversity?

For Olivia, the answer is simple: “I’ve always been hungry for life. And I have chosen to believe the best-case scenario will happen to me.”

Courtesy Olivia DeKold

Olivia was born with a rare form of digestive failure called intestinal pseudo-obstruction, a disorder in which the digestive tract behaves as if blocked although no physical blockage exists. Instead, the bowel’s muscles and nerves fail to move food, fluids and waste through the body.

“The bowel is low tone and quite flaccid, so it can’t push things through,” Dr. Wales said. “Think of it like a big water balloon, filling with fluid and flipping and flopping and twisting inside the abdomen as it becomes distended — all of which can cause great pain.”

Days after Olivia turned two, surgeons removed her colon and performed an ileostomy to create an exit for waste from her small intestine. A jejunostomy or J-tube was placed in her stomach to deliver fluids and medications, followed by a gastrostomy or G-tube designed to vent excess gas, stomach juices and fluids to ease bloating.

“Olivia’s abdomen is like a cyborg,” said childhood friend Keta Jeaux. “She has tubes crisscrossing from one area to another where she has to hook stuff up to herself. As kids we saw all of that on a regular basis, because she would change out her own tubes and dispose of them, or change out the cotton linings that go in between the tubing and her actual flesh.

“We were just like, ‘Oh, that’s Olivia, that’s Olivia’s stuff. Okay, cool.’ Then she’d be climbing oak trees with her tubes and stuff hanging off of her. She’d drag them through the yard and I’d be following after her doing whatever fun little kid thing we were doing.”

Even at a young age, Olivia was unusually determined, said Keesha McCue, Keta’s mom and a close friend of the family.

“Olivia just had a particular resilience about her,” Keesha said. “She was probably the spunkiest little girl I’ve ever known. She’d go over to a ditch while they were playing and vomit or empty her ileostomy bag and then start playing again.”

Despite the severity of her condition, Olivia considers her childhood normal, similar to friends with no health concerns. The credit, she says, goes to her mom.

“My mom did a really good job of making it not be all about my illness. I remember one time my G-tube got yanked out,” she said. “Mom was like, ‘OK, let’s just pop your tube back in, it’s no big deal.’ She never freaked out about anything.”

Michele Abercrombie/CNN

Looking back, Olivia’s mom doesn’t see it that way.

“I wasn’t some monumental mom,” Sheila said. “Olivia just always had this adventuresome spirit. She loved to climb trees and ride her bike. I wanted her to have that, so we would just put all the pumps and tubes in the bike’s basket.

“She also wanted to take care of her tubes by herself and she was stubborn, which I think has served her well. It was hard for me and my husband, but I often thought, ‘You know, she’s got to do this for the rest of her life.’”

During the original surgery, doctors also threaded a central line into a chamber of Olivia’s heart to deliver total parenteral nutrition, or TPN. The milky-looking mixture of predigested carbohydrates, proteins, fat, minerals and vitamins is fed directly into her bloodstream, bypassing the damaged intestines.

“I hook myself up to a big 10-pound bag of TPN at night and it’s much lighter in the morning,” Olivia said. “I can put it in a purse or backpack for the rest of the day. Most of the tubes are hidden by my clothes — when high waisted jeans became popular it was like the best thing ever.”

While TPN delivers the majority of Olivia’s nutrients, she is still encouraged to eat small amounts. Food supports beneficial gut bacteria and keeps her stomach and other digestives organs from atrophying, her doctor said.

“However, even with little to no food, the digestive system still excretes mucus and fluids and even a bit of stool, all of which can dilate the intestine and cause excessive bloating and pain,” Dr. Wales added.

The same lifesaving treatment that has sustained Olivia for decades, however, takes a deadly toll on her liver.

“I’ve been on TPN for 24 years now, longer than most people make it without going into liver failure,” she said. “I’ve got fatty liver, and my liver elasticity is like that of a 40-year-old alcoholic.

“Ultimately, I’ll need a liver transplant, but I would still be on TPN, which would just kill that liver too,” Olivia added. “So the plan is to get a stomach, liver and small intestine transplant.”

Being on TPN also leaves Olivia vulnerable to kidney disease, bone disease and neurocognitive issues. And because the central line provides a straight shot to her heart, even a small infection can quickly turn into sepsis, an extreme, life-threatening immune system response to bacteria.

“Growing up, anytime I got a fever, we had to drive two hours to the hospital and get blood work to make sure that I wasn’t going septic,” she said. “It was a mandatory 48-hour inpatient stay. Since there are a lot of fevers in childhood, I was definitely in the hospital a lot.

“But once again, my mom did a wonderful job of making the hospital a less scary place,” Olivia said. “We always had something fun to do.”

When Olivia was eight, a sudden episode of excruciating abdominal pain sent her family racing to the hospital.

“I was writhing around, absolutely in horrific agony,” she remembers. “It took about two weeks for the doctors to figure out what it was.”

Watching the little girl suffer during that time was unbearable, said Sheila’s best friend Keesha, who stayed at the hospital with the family.

“Olivia would just scream out, ‘I want to die, I want to die, I want to die,’ over and over,” Keesha said. “The residents would give her the highest doses of pain meds they could without killing her and it still wasn’t enough.”

One night Olivia was in such agony she became comatose. Despite that, on-call surgical residents refused to act, Sheila said.

“This one doctor didn’t want to operate and he was saying all these horrible things about what would happen to her if they did,” she said. “Finally a different resident decided to take her to surgery.”

When surgeons opened her abdomen, they found a portion of Olivia’s small bowel grotesquely distended — about 10 times larger than it should have been, Sheila said.

“The doctor who was giving us all the negativity was there. When he picked up her bowel to inspect it, it burst all over his brand new $200 shoes,” she added.

“We laugh about it now, but I’ll never forget that night,” said Sheila, tearing up. “We thought she was going to die.”

When Olivia was in college, doctors told her that her liver was failing — she would need a multi-organ transplant within five years. Feeling strong and healthy at the time, the news was devastating.

“The statistics on these transplants are very bleak — you’re almost guaranteed to be dead 10 years after your transplant,” she said. “I was 20 and making all these plans for my future and honestly, I just lost it. I spent the next few years in absolute terror of turning 25.”

For the first time in her life, Olivia began to spiral. She dropped to one college class a semester. She used her hard-earned savings to travel to places she feared she might never see. She became jealous of friends who were finishing college, launching careers and moving forward with their lives.

“I did not suffer with grace,” she said. “I allowed my suffering to bring me to despair, which is just so contrary to how I’d been raised and lived my life previously. I just feel so much regret over that, because that’s just not at all who I am.”

As her emotions plummeted, Olivia’s disease flared. She began to feel nauseated after eating even tiny amounts of food. Projectile vomiting followed, along with abdominal cramping and severe bloating.

“It was this insidious increase of pain over time, to the point that it was overwhelming and all-encompassing,” she said. “It was really easy to believe, ‘This is my new normal, this is the way it’s going to be now and forever. There is no hope, right?’”

Bouts of pain became so frequent and unpredictable that Olivia could no longer manage on her own. She moved back in with her parents. Then a fissure opened next to one of the tubes in her stomach.

“It felt like someone stabbed me in the side. That was the final straw,” she said. “I had all these symptoms, and I was so sick of worrying about this transplant looming over me. I decided to find a transplant surgeon and get it over with. I was tired of being afraid.”

Fortunately, the surgeon Olivia found was Dr. Wales. He had recently began using an alternative to an organ transplant in a small subset of patients who are TPN dependent.

“The goal is to create a smaller bowel that is less likely to dilate, flip flop and cause pain,” he said. “I took Olivia’s anaconda of a small intestine and removed 250 centimeters, or about 8 feet, to reduce the length.

He also cut the diameter of the intestine from 10 centimeters, or nearly 4 inches, to 3 centimeters, or 1 inch, leaving less room for gas and fluid to build up.

Finding a way to control symptoms without a transplant is beneficial for patients, he said, because the chance of being alive on TPN in five years is 90%, much higher than survival after a bowel transplant.

“We can’t cure the illness, but we can improve their quality of life, make their symptoms more manageable, and avoid the need for immediate transplant and lifelong immune suppression,” he said.

After the surgery, Olivia’s daily life changed in ways that once seemed impossible. Her debilitating pain was mostly gone. She could eat small amounts again. She finished college. She met her husband-to-be, Cody Cramer, and they began traveling the west together, living for a while in Nevada and Arizona.

“Doctors now say I probably won’t need a transplant until I’m 40,” Olivia said. “And looking back I feel so foolish, going through all the worry and all the stress. I guess it was preparing me to be extremely grateful for life.”

She now shares that hard-won gratitude on her YouTube channel, which is filled with inspiring messages and her love for knitting , a hobby she first took up as a child to pass long hours in the hospital.

“I know how scary it is when you first get diagnosed and you are only told the horror stories,” she tells her audience. “So, if you need it, let me be your example. You can have a severe chronic illness, you can be on TPN, you can be always hooked up to a pump, and you can have tubes in your side, but you can still thrive and live a wonderful life.”

Flourishing, however, doesn’t mean living without pain or struggle. Olivia still has flares of agony, some debilitating, others life-threatening. Less than two weeks before her wedding, an infection in one of her central lines became septic.

“She was in such a bad place I thought we might have to cancel the wedding right up to the day before,” her husband said.

Released on antibiotics, Olivia maintained her poise at the rehearsal dinner and the next-day wedding, although much of it was a blur.

“The morning of the wedding, it just broke my heart,” her mom said. “She was so tired, she hadn’t washed her hair or anything. I’m driving her to the church, and she’s hanging her IV antibiotics from the sun vizor and just keeping it together.

“Later, she’s like, ‘Mom, I don’t remember much of the reception.’ I told her she was brave and beautiful and no one guessed she’d just come from the hospital. And it’s so true — she was smiling and exuded complete grace.”

Today, Olivia holds tightly to life’s gifts as if her life depends on it. In many ways, she believes it does.

“Regardless of how I’m feeling, I’m making a huge effort to be positive, because this is literally the only life I get — and I’m not going to be unhappy with it.”

编者按：“战胜逆境”系列旨在颂扬那些以诚实、勇气和韧性与非凡逆境作斗争的普通人。

奥利维亚·德科尔德从出生起就一直在与死神搏斗。

“她会不停地吃奶，然后把奶水吐出来，吐出来的量很大，”奥利维亚的母亲希拉·泽德勒说。“我们开始给她添加辅食，她也尝试吃，但她一直便秘，一直呕吐。”

“她很瘦，但肚子却鼓胀得厉害，”希拉说。“我们给她灌肠——一天八九次。”

就在奥利维亚两岁生日前夕，医生们终于发现了病因——一种无法治愈的遗传疾病导致的消化衰竭，这种疾病在历史上曾导致 25% 的患者死亡，而且往往发生在儿童时期。

外科医生切除了她的结肠，并在她的腹部开了三个口子，以便排出废物，缓解她全身的肿胀和痉挛。植入她心脏附近的导管每天为她输送12小时的营养，直至她生命的尽头。

然而，这条生命线却让她极易感染病原体。奥利维亚八岁时险些丧命，之后在医院里与发烧和感染抗争了数周，并经历了多次手术。她可能还需要一次手术——高风险的多器官移植，包括肝脏和消化系统。

然而，现年26岁的奥利维亚却过得非常精彩。她婚姻美满，正计划组建家庭。她游历了美国西部，并在伦敦待了10天，随身携带维持生命所需的医疗用品，并时刻保持警惕。作为一名狂热的徒步旅行者、背包客和露营爱好者，她甚至还滑雪、划皮艇，并跑过5公里——对于她这样的病人来说，这些壮举都需要非凡的耐力和毅力。

“她简直是个活力四射的人。奥利维亚迄今为止的人生比大多数人都要精彩，这完全是靠她强大的意志力，”她的儿时好友凯塔·乔克斯告诉CNN。“她每天都在选择自己要如何生活。”

她那份坚定的决心，也得到了多年来一直为她治疗的医生们的认可。

“奥利维亚从不放弃。她积极应对自己的病情，不让病情定义自己，”她的外科医生、俄亥俄州辛辛那提儿童医院医疗中心肠道康复外科主任保罗·威尔士博士说道。

奥利维亚的故事充满希望、毅力和勇气。然而，它与数百万每天与罕见病和慢性病、意外伤害以及人生挫折作斗争的人们的故事遥相呼应。

在不断遭遇逆境的情况下，一个人究竟该如何逆境求生？

对奥利维亚来说，答案很简单：“我一直对生活充满渴望。而且我选择相信最好的结果会发生在我身上。”

图片由 Olivia DeKold 提供

奥利维亚出生时患有一种罕见的消化功能障碍，称为肠假性梗阻。这种疾病会导致消化道功能紊乱，表现得像被阻塞了一样，但实际上并没有物理性阻塞。相反，肠道的肌肉和神经无法有效地将食物、液体和废物输送到身体各处。

威尔士医生说：“肠道张力低下，非常松弛，所以无法推动食物或液体通过。你可以把它想象成一个巨大的水球，充满液体，在腹腔内翻滚、扭动，随着腹部膨胀而膨胀——所有这些都会引起剧烈疼痛。”

奥利维亚两岁生日后几天，外科医生切除了她的结肠，并进行了回肠造口术，以便排出小肠内的废物。随后，医生在她的胃里放置了一根空肠造口管（J管），用于输送液体和药物；之后又放置了一根胃造口管（G管），用于排出多余的气体、胃液和胃液，以缓解腹胀。

“奥利维亚的腹部就像个半机械人，”儿时好友凯塔·乔克斯说。“她身上插满了管子，从一个地方连接到另一个地方，她需要自己把各种东西连接到这些管子上。我们小时候经常看到这些，因为她会自己更换管子并丢弃它们，或者更换管子和她皮肤之间的棉垫。”

“我们当时就想，‘哦，那是奥利维亚，那是奥利维亚的东西。好的，酷。’然后她就会带着管子之类的东西爬橡树。她会拖着它们穿过院子，我就跟在她后面，做着我们这些小孩子都会做的有趣的事情。”

凯塔的母亲兼该家庭的密友基莎·麦克尤说，奥利维亚从小就展现出异乎寻常的决心。

“奥利维亚身上有一种特别的韧性，”基莎说。“她可能是我认识的最有活力的小女孩。他们玩耍的时候，她会走到沟边呕吐或者清空回肠造口袋，然后又继续玩。”

尽管奥利维亚的病情很严重，但她认为自己的童年很正常，和那些没有健康问题的朋友一样。她说，这都要归功于她的母亲。

“我妈妈做得很好，她没有让我的病情成为大家关注的焦点。我记得有一次我的胃管被人拔掉了，”她说。“妈妈说，‘没事，我们再把管子插回去就行了，没什么大不了的。’她从来不会因为任何事而惊慌失措。”

米歇尔·阿伯克龙比/CNN

回想起来，奥利维亚的妈妈并不这么认为。

“我不是什么了不起的妈妈，”希拉说。“奥利维亚一直都很有冒险精神。她喜欢爬树和骑自行车。我希望她能拥有这些，所以我们就把所有的打气筒和内胎都放在自行车篮里。”

“她还想自己照顾好身上的管子，而且她很固执，我认为这对她很有帮助。这对我和我丈夫来说都很艰难，但我常常想，‘你知道，她余生都得这样做。’”

在最初的手术中，医生们还在奥利维亚的心脏腔室中插入了一根中心静脉导管，用于输送全肠外营养（TPN）。这种乳白色的混合物由预消化的碳水化合物、蛋白质、脂肪、矿物质和维生素组成，直接进入她的血液，绕过了受损的肠道。

“我晚上会接上一大袋10磅重的全肠外营养液，早上起来就轻多了，”奥利维亚说。“我可以把它放在手提包或背包里，白天不用管。大部分管子都被衣服遮住了——高腰牛仔裤流行起来的时候，简直是天大的福音。”

虽然全肠外营养（TPN）为奥利维亚提供了大部分营养，但医生仍然鼓励她少量进食。医生说，食物有助于肠道益生菌的生长，并能防止她的胃和其他消化器官萎缩。

“然而，即使几乎没有食物，消化系统仍然会排出粘液、液体，甚至少量粪便，所有这些都会扩张肠道，导致过度腹胀和疼痛，”威尔士医生补充道。

然而，这种挽救奥利维亚生命的治疗方法，虽然维持了她几十年的生命，却对她的肝脏造成了致命的损害。

“我已经接受全肠外营养24年了，比大多数人在不发生肝衰竭的情况下接受全肠外营养的时间都长，”她说。“我有脂肪肝，我的肝脏弹性就像一个40岁的酗酒者一样。”

“最终我还是需要肝移植，但那样我还是得靠全肠外营养，这也会损害移植的肝脏，”奥利维亚补充道。“所以目前的计划是同时进行胃、肝和小肠移植。”

接受全肠外营养也使奥利维亚容易患上肾病、骨病和神经认知障碍。而且，由于中心静脉导管直接通向她的心脏，即使是轻微的感染也可能迅速发展成败血症——一种由细菌引起的极端且危及生命的免疫系统反应。

“我小时候，只要一发烧，我们就得开车两小时去医院做血液检查，确保我没有败血症，”她说。“必须住院48小时。因为小时候经常发烧，所以我肯定经常住院。”

“但我妈妈再次做得非常棒，她让医院不再那么可怕，”奥利维亚说。“我们总能找到好玩的事情做。”

奥利维亚八岁时，突然一阵剧烈的腹痛让她的家人赶紧赶往医院。

“我当时痛苦地扭动着身体，简直痛不欲生，”她回忆道。“医生花了大约两周时间才确诊是什么病。”

希拉最好的朋友基莎说，看着小女孩在那段时间受苦，真是令人难以忍受。基莎当时一直陪在希拉一家在医院里。

“奥利维亚会一遍又一遍地尖叫着‘我想死，我想死，我想死’，”基莎说。“住院医生们给她注射了尽可能高剂量的止痛药，但还是不够。”

一天晚上，奥利维亚疼痛难忍，陷入了昏迷。尽管如此，值班的外科住院医师却拒绝采取任何行动，希拉说道。

“那位医生不想给她做手术，还说了好多可怕的事情，说如果做了手术她会怎么样，”她说。“最后是另一位住院医生决定给她做手术。”

希拉说，外科医生打开奥利维亚的腹部后，发现她的一部分小肠严重膨胀——大约比正常大小大了 10 倍。

“那个一直给我们泼冷水的医生也在场。当他拿起她的肠道进行检查时，肠道破裂，溅了他一身价值200美元的新鞋，”她补充道。

“现在我们谈起这件事都会笑，但我永远不会忘记那个夜晚，”希拉说着说着就哽咽了。“我们当时都以为她要死了。”

奥利维亚上大学时，医生告诉她肝脏衰竭——五年内她需要进行多器官移植。当时她感觉身体强壮健康，所以这个消息对她来说无疑是晴天霹雳。

“这些移植手术的统计数据非常惨淡——几乎可以肯定，移植后10年内你就会去世，”她说。“我20岁的时候，对未来做了很多规划，但说实话，我彻底崩溃了。接下来的几年，我一直生活在对25岁的恐惧之中。”

奥利维亚生平第一次陷入了低谷。她每学期只选修一门大学课程。她用辛辛苦苦攒下的积蓄去旅行，去那些她以前害怕永远也去不了的地方。她开始嫉妒那些顺利完成大学学业、开启职业生涯、重新开始生活的朋友们。

“我没有优雅地承受痛苦，”她说。“我任由痛苦将我推向绝望，这与我之前的成长经历和生活方式截然相反。我对此感到非常后悔，因为那根本不是真正的我。”

随着情绪的急剧恶化，奥利维亚的病情也开始加重。她开始感到恶心，即使只吃一点点东西也会如此。随后出现了喷射性呕吐，以及腹部绞痛和严重的腹胀。

“随着时间的推移，疼痛悄然加剧，最终变得难以承受，完全吞噬了我，”她说。“我很容易就相信，‘这就是我的新常态，以后也只能这样了。没有希望了，对吗？’”

疼痛发作越来越频繁，也越来越难以预测，奥利维亚再也无法独自应对。她只好搬回父母家住。之后，她胃里的一根导管旁边出现了一道裂缝。

“感觉就像有人狠狠地捅了我一刀。这成了压垮骆驼的最后一根稻草，”她说。“我出现了所有这些症状，而且我一直担心着移植手术，这种焦虑让我感到厌倦。我决定找个移植外科医生，把一切都结束。我受够了恐惧。”

幸运的是，奥利维亚找到的外科医生是威尔士医生。他最近开始为一小部分依赖全肠外营养的患者采用器官移植的替代方案。

“我们的目标是使肠道变短，减少扩张、翻转和引起疼痛的可能性，”他说。“我取下了奥利维亚那条像蟒蛇一样长的小肠，切除了250厘米，也就是大约8英尺，以缩短它的长度。”

他还把肠道的直径从 10 厘米（约 4 英寸）减至 3 厘米（1 英寸），从而减少了气体和液体积聚的空间。

他说，找到一种无需移植就能控制症状的方法对患者是有益的，因为五年内依靠全肠外营养存活的几率高达 90%，远高于肠移植后的存活率。

他说：“我们无法治愈这种疾病，但我们可以改善他们的生活质量，使他们的症状更容易控制，并避免立即进行移植和终身免疫抑制。”

手术后，奥利维亚的日常生活发生了翻天覆地的变化，这在以前是难以想象的。她之前难以忍受的疼痛几乎消失了。她又能吃少量食物了。她完成了大学学业。她遇到了未来的丈夫科迪·克莱默，两人开始一起游历美国西部，并在内华达州和亚利桑那州生活了一段时间。

“医生现在说我可能要到40岁才需要移植手术，”奥利维亚说。“回想起来，我觉得自己真是太傻了，当初那么担心、那么焦虑。我想，那段经历是为了让我学会对生命充满感恩吧。”

现在，她在自己的 YouTube 频道上分享了这份来之不易的感恩之情。她的频道里充满了鼓舞人心的信息，以及她对编织的热爱。编织是她小时候为了打发在医院里的漫长时光而开始的爱好。

“我知道刚确诊时有多可怕，因为你听到的全是些恐怖的故事，”她对听众说。“所以，如果你需要，就让我来做你的榜样吧。即使你患有严重的慢性疾病，即使你需要全肠外营养，即使你一直连着输液泵，即使你身上插满了管子，你仍然可以过上精彩的生活。”

然而，生活美满并不意味着没有痛苦或挣扎。奥利维亚仍然会遭受剧烈疼痛的折磨，有些疼痛令人虚弱，有些则危及生命。就在她婚礼前不到两周，她的一根中心静脉导管感染并发展成了败血症。

“她当时的状态非常糟糕，直到婚礼前一天，我都觉得我们可能不得不取消婚礼了，”她的丈夫说。

服用抗生素后，奥利维亚在彩排晚宴和第二天的婚礼上保持了镇定，尽管大部分记忆都有些模糊。

“婚礼那天早上，我心都碎了，”她妈妈说。“她太累了，连头发都没洗。我开车送她去教堂，她把输液的抗生素挂在遮阳板上，强忍着情绪。”

“后来，她说：‘妈妈，我不太记得招待会的情况了。’我告诉她，她既勇敢又美丽，谁也猜不到她刚从医院出来。这话一点儿没错——她脸上始终带着笑容，举手投足间都散发着优雅的气质。”

如今，奥利维亚紧紧抓住生活中的点点滴滴，仿佛生命就维系于此。在很多方面，她也确实这么认为。

“无论我感觉如何，我都会努力保持积极乐观，因为这是我唯一的人生——我不会对此感到不快乐。”