Trinity Shores initially dismissed her symptoms as nothing more than a persistent cold.

As a vibrant 14-year-old engaged in cheerleading and soccer, worrying about her health seemed unnecessary.

However, just a couple of days after being sent home with a 100°F (37.8°C) fever, her condition dramatically worsened. She was rushed to the hospital in an unresponsive state, placed into a medically induced coma, and required tubes as wide as garden hoses inserted into her stomach. Her survival chances were described as ‘almost zero.’

It took two months before Shores regained consciousness, another month before she could walk and talk again, and it was eight months in total before she was well enough to return to school.

This alarming incident surfaces as the U.S. contends with a severe flu season, with several states grappling with a mutated ‘super flu’ causing unprecedented hospitalizations and illness.

According to the CDC, this year alone, at least eight children and teens have succumbed to the flu. The virus has infected over 15 million individuals, hospitalized 180,000, and claimed 7,400 lives.

For comparison, at this time last year, five children had died, 9.1 million had been sickened, 110,000 hospitalized and 4,700 died.

After she was sent home from school in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in early January 2018, Shores said she was taken to see the family doctor who said she had a simple viral infection that would get better in three to five days. 

By lunchtime, after she saw the doctor in the morning, Shores was unable to stand and had an exhausted expression in her face.

Trinity Shores, now 22 years old, fell severely sick in 2018 with the flu. She suffered from pneumonia and was in a coma for two months

What followed was a panicked drive to the hospital by her stepfather, where doctors warned her lungs had filled with fluid, starving her brain of oxygen, and that her organs were shutting down.

She was diagnosed with pneumonia at the hospital, a lung infection where the organ has become inflamed, and was placed on a machine to help her breathe.

Her family was told she had the complication because she was infected with influenza B, a strain of the flu that is spread between people via coughs and sneezes. About one in four flu cases are influenza B, with flu A being significantly more common.

Fearing that Shores wouldn’t survive the next few hours, doctors called for an air ambulance to a specialist hospital in Aurora, Colorado, 110 miles away.

Before the transfer, her parents were told that their daughter’s chance of survival was ‘almost zero’ and that they should start to prepare for the worst.

In a bid to keep Shores alive for the transport, doctors sedated her and placed her on a life support machine that would be in the ambulance.

She had cannulas, thick metal tubes, placed into her neck to take over work for her lungs, which had stopped working because they were filled with fluid.

She was also placed on dialysis, which takes over the function of the kidneys to clean the blood of toxins, because doctors said these organs were also shutting down.

Shores is shown above during her medically induced coma while battling the flu. She said her lungs had filled with fluid, making it difficult to breathe, and that her organs started to shut down

In patients suffering from pneumonia, this can happen because of the severe inflammation that the condition causes, which can reduce blood flow to organs and lead to dehydration, affecting the kidneys. 

On the drive, Shores said she could hear people but could not see them. She said: ‘Doctors would tell me to move my hands, and I was screaming inside, “I AM! Why can’t you see it?!”‘

While in the ambulance, her brain also started to create alternate realities. In one case, she thought she was a soldier shot in the face during a base raid. In another, she believed her own mother was selling her organs. In the third, she thought her little brother had stabbed her in the neck.

Arriving at the second hospital, doctors said she had been infected with influenza B.

Many only suffer mild symptoms before recovering. But for Shores, the infection had triggered a cascade of symptoms. 

Doctors also warned she had developed sepsis, a life-threatening complication where the immune system goes into overdrive in response to an infection and prompts organs to shut down.

She was put into a medically induced coma, which is meant to reduce inflammation caused by the immune system, and doctors waited to find out whether she would improve.

Over the next two months she was in the coma and, for the first month, her heart would stop every day and would have to be restarted by doctors.

Shores has no memories of this period but said that, the whole time, she felt like she was with ‘something spiritual.’

She said: ‘I saw darkness, a huge tree, glowing orbs of energy. I felt love and acceptance. I thought, “If this is dying, I’m ready.” But I wasn’t done.’ 

But after her vital signs began to improve, doctors decided to gradually reverse her medically induced coma. It was not clear what triggered this, but in previous cases, this has happened once patients begin to breathe on their own or their organ function has sufficiently improved. 

Shores said: ‘They put Vaseline in your eyes in a coma so they don’t dry out. I woke up and thought I was blind.

‘I hallucinated water [too]. Perfect cold bottles with condensation. I cried watching nurses drink from their tumblers. I have never wanted anything more than water.’

Doctors said that Shores had an ‘almost zero’ chance of survival and told her family to prepare for the worst. She is shown above in the hospital

At one point, her cannulas failed, causing Shores to lose at least a pint of blood, a fifth of all the blood in the adult human body.

Surgeons managed to stop the bleeding but had to move the cannulas from her neck and insert them through her abdomen into her heart. She would need three open-heart surgeries to have them removed.

Shores said she was extremely weak when she finally woke up, as her muscles had wasted away, and she needed intensive personal training to gradually rebuild her strength.

Within a few days after waking, she was able to sit up again, but it took weeks until she could once again take her first tentative steps. It would be months before she could speak again.

Throughout her sickness, Shores’ mother, Lisa Weaver, remained by her bedside, which she said helped her battle the illness. 

Shores, now 22 years old, said: ‘She never stopped talking to me. She’d hold my hand and tell me everything we were going to do together when I got better, our future horses, a big garden, our land. She manifested my recovery before anyone believed it was possible.’

After more than two months in the hospital, she was discharged to a rehabilitation center where she gradually rebuilt her strength.

It was not clear why she became so sick from the flu, but doctors say this can happen if the immune system overreacts to an infection. Shores has no idea where she caught the infection from. 

Shores is shown above in the hospital. She was put on machines to take over the functions of her lungs, kidneys and other organs in order to give them time to recover

Doctors said she was lucky to still be alive.

Shores said her lungs are permanently damaged. She now has bronchiectasis, a chronic condition where the airways collapse and cause mucus to build up daily.

She said: ‘I get winded fast. I cough up phlegm. I use a nebulizer with hypertonic saline. I call it my sexy mucus era.’

A nebulizer is a medical device that turns liquid into a fine mist, while hypertonic saline is a solution used to draw water out of the body and into mucus, making mucus thinner and easier to clear.

In an attempt to regain her strength, she now hits the gym, pushing her lungs harder week by week, determined to one day run a mile without stopping. But the trauma is still inside her. 

She added: ‘I haven’t processed it. Back then, I was just fighting. But now? I look at my scars and realize, that all really happened.

‘This experience made me who I am. That’s why I have my star tattoo, I believe I’m here for a reason.

She added: ‘I survived for something bigger. I just don’t know what yet. I’m just happy to be alive. And to drink my own water whenever I want.’