It began with the shocking news that she needed a liver transplant or she could die within days. And it ended at the Grammys Sunday night with a walk down the red carpet and a new lease on life.

Thanks to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, Hempfield High School senior Nicole Lister and her family, including mom and stepdad, Jody and Eric Cranford, and dad James Lister, got to spend the weekend in Los Angeles attending the Grammy Awards.

"I'm having fun," Lister said from Los Angeles on Saturday morning. "We went to the rehearsal last night and it was really interesting to see what went on behind the scenes."

Among the many celebrities they saw were the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Smoky Robinson, Chris Brown and Christina Aguilera.

Lister got to walk down the red carpet Sunday night and bought a sparkly beaded gown for the occasion.

The fun weekend came less than five months after Lister was diagnosed with a disease she'd never heard of.

A disease that she's had since birth that was killing her.

It's been a rollercoaster ride for Lister, 17, who discovered in late September that she had Wilson's Disease, a rare and sometimes fatal condition where the body retains copper.

The trace mineral plays an important role in metabolism, enabling many critical enzymes to function properly. But too much copper in the body can lead to liver damage and eventually brain damage and death.

For many, the disease can be controlled through drugs and a diet that limits foods high in copper, like nuts, shellfish and mushrooms. But Lister had acute liver failure by the time of the diagnosis.

Early symptoms were hard to pin down.

"She was struggling in school, she was extremely tired and she kept complaining about stomach aches," her mother recalls. "She'd come home from school and sleep for three hours."

"To me, it felt normal," Lister says. "I was tired a lot, and really sleepy, but I just thought that was normal. I didn't know any different."

Lister had been taking anti-seizure medication since she was 8 and one of the side effects was it made her tired.

But when her mother noticed that Lister's eyes were jaundiced, she knew something was wrong and took her to the hospital.

Her doctor thought the problem was coming from the anti-seizure medication.

"That just didn't seem right to me," says Cranford. "So we took her to Hershey Medical Center. They checked her out and when they came out, they told me to call my insurance company because Nicole was going to need a liver transplant. Right away. What a moment of shock that was. I was not prepared for that."

That transplant had to happen quickly, doctor's said, because Nicole's liver was failing, as were her kidneys. She could be dead within days.

Miraculously, a liver was found right away, though doctors wouldn't know until they harvested the liver if it would be viable. That took another 15 hours.

"That waiting was the most painful and grueling of all," says Cranford. "But as soon as she came out of surgery, her color improved. She had been extremely jaundiced."

"When I woke up, I did feel a lot better," Lister says.

While the liver was working beautifully, Lister's kidneys took several weeks to recover and she had to go through three sessions of dialysis.

In all, she spent a month in the hospital.

That stay took on a happier dimension when, two days after the operation, Lister was told she would be granted a wish by the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

"The wish itself is wonderful," says her mom. "But the fact that she had something exciting to think about with all that she was going through was amazing."

Lister asked all the doctors and nurses who came into her room what they would ask for. She thought about taking a big trip, but then realized she could do that on her own. This was a chance to do something she might never be able to do again.

And so, she chose to go to the Grammys.

"She loves all kind of music," her mom says. "Justin Timberlake is her favorite right now."

Lister's recovery is coming along nicely and her mom is hoping that she might be able to get off the seizure medication, which may be tied to the Wilson's Disease.

"We aren't 100 percent sure, but it's possible that once all the copper is filtered out of her system, her seizures will go away. In a normal person, 35 is considered a high range for copper in the system. Hers was 1,153, so she's got a lot of copper to be processed. It could take up to 18 months for it to filter through."

Lister goes to the nursing program at Willow Street Career and Technology Campus for a half a day and then, two days a week, teachers come to her house to work on academics.

"She wanted to be a nurse before all this happened," her mom says. "But this experience made her even more inspired."

• CONTACT US: jholahan@LNPnews.com or 481-6016

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