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Your parents are 17 and 18. You're four years old. You have a terminal illness. The doctors just told them you probably won't make it to first grade.

Now what?

This is the story of what happens when a village decides that's unacceptable.

My parents were young and unprepared for parenthood, let alone parenthood of a child with cystic fibrosis. So they needed parenting, too. That's where Granni and Poppa came in — living within blocks, sometimes just houses between us, surrogate parents who literally held the foundation together.

Granni taught me how to bake, how to cook, how to clean, how to recycle, and how to save water for laundry. Granni had afternoon tea rituals with very specific rules: milk goes in first, always warm the teapot with boiling water before you make the pot. These weren't just tea times. They were rituals about showing up. They were about a grandmother loving her granddaughter enough to teach her something useless and beautiful.

Poppa was like the Godfather — all knowing, all powerful, this presence that commanded respect without demanding it. Every Sunday after mass, Poppa would take the entire family to Dairy Queen for sundaes. It was sacred. It held us together. Poppa was the rock that anchored everything.

My uncle was the one who teased me relentlessly, who made me laugh when nothing was funny, who treated me like just another person worth messing with instead of a sick kid to be pitied. That banter saved me.

My cousins Denise and Debbie tormented me with pranks — they convinced me a pirate lived under the bed and would grab my leg if I wasn't careful. I still have a thing about pirates under my bed. Doug was mentally challenged but could throw a ball farther than anyone I've ever seen, and I was in awe of him. I took him under my wing, and we had real adventures together.

And then there was Neil, my brother, 15 months younger, who had to live in my shadow, who had to follow me in school, who had a complicated relationship with being the healthy sibling in a family consumed with my illness. We fought. We protected each other. We would take a bullet for each other.

But none of them compared to Sleepy.

Sleepy is a brown, fuzzy dog the size of a medium-sized book who was given to me for my first sinus surgery at age five. He has droopy, cute eyes. He got an ID tag like I did when I was admitted to the hospital. He went into surgery with me. He was never not with me. He was my only true unconditional friend — the one being who never pushed crap down my throat or beat me up or demanded anything except love.

I still have him. He's 50 years old. He's my rock.

This village didn't save me through pity or martyrdom. They saved me by loving me fiercely, by teaching me to make tea the right way, by taking me for Dairy Queen sundaes, by teasing me relentlessly, by being present, and by refusing to treat a sick child like she was broken.

They made me fierce.