When Ashlee Dahlberg’s 8-year-old son, Liam, came home from school one evening complaining of nothing more than a headache, it didn’t set off alarms. Like any parent, she assumed it was a mild illness — maybe a cold, maybe fatigue from a long day. Nothing seemed urgent.
But by sunrise, everything had changed.Liam was nearly unresponsive, his little body already succumbing to something much more insidious than anyone could
have imagined. Ashlee and her husband rushed him to the hospital, frantic and terrified. There, doctors delivered a diagnosis that would shatter
their world forever: Liam had contracted a rare and aggressive bacterial infection known as Haemophilus influenzae type b — commonly called Hib.