Thinking with delight of a day in the sun before the start of final exams, Katrina Butler hopped into a car filled with her friends and headed to Folsom Lake.

It was Sunday of the Memorial Day weekend. The weather was perfect for swimming, perfect for just sitting around “doing silly stuff like blowing bubbles.”

Katrina, then a junior at Christian Brothers High School, had already lined up a summer job working in a Sacramento retail store and a fairly new driver’s license was tucked away in her pocket.

“I just wanted to get ready for finals, get out of school and have a fun summer,” she recalled.

Within hours Katrina would be fighting for her life against a disease that strikes its victims with horrific speed.

Katrina Butler, center, a senior at Christian Brothers High School in Sacramento, greets friends on the first day of the new school year. She is returning to school after a battle for her life with a bacterial form of meningitis. Cathy Joyce/Herald photo

While spending the night at her sister Jennifer’s home in Folsom, she began having chills and running a fever. The fever seemed to go away a few hours later. But when the teenager awoke Monday morning, her whole body ached and she began noticing some light marks that looked like bruises and hurt to touch.

Katrina’s father, Tom Butler, who is superintendent of schools for the Diocese of Sacramento, remembers his daughter’s call for a ride home.

“When a 16-year-old with a driver’s license calls you and says to come pick her up, you know something’s wrong,” Butler said.

Katrina’s mother, Sandi, thought her daughter had the flu. Then she spotted the bruises.

“There was a purple mark on her face, she was too weak to go to the bathroom unassisted, and was saying her fingers felt like they were swelling up,” Sandi Butler said. “There was something not right.”

The Butlers checked their daughter into Mercy General Hospital’s emergency room at 5 p.m. Monday, just four hours after she had returned home. The doctor on call made a diagnosis that would prove to be on the mark: meningococcal meningitis, a bacterial form of meningitis. Treatment was begun immediately.

The next 24 hours became a nightmare as Katrina’s blood pressure alternatively skyrocketed and plummeted.

“Everything went blurry and I think they said something about my blood pressure dropping,” Katrina recalled. “I was asleep for a week after that.”

Over the next 72 hours the Butlers were at their daughter’s bedside as Mercy’s medical staff worked aggressively to stabilize her blood vessel system. Even then, as she moved in and out of consciousness, Katrina’s spirit was tangible.

“Even with a tube down her throat she would react to the presence of people in the room and would try to communicate,” Tom Butler recalled, smiling as he remembered his daughter speedily spelling out words with letters of the alphabet attached to a clipboard.

Family members were ever present: Katrina’s brother, Dave, and his fiancée commuted daily from San Francisco; her brother, Tom, flew home from a backpacking trip in Eastern Europe; and her sister, Jennifer, and a bevy of aunts and uncles arrived daily.

On May 31, Tom Butler sent out the first of a series of E-mail message prayer requests to every Catholic school in the diocese, to Catholic school superintendents statewide and friends throughout the country.

“I was very selfish because I knew the more people I sent this message out to, the more people would be praying for us,” he said. “We needed prayers.”

And prayers came by the bucketsfull. Prayer circles from California to Wisconsin prayed for Katrina and thousands of school children and principals included her in their prayers. A Catholic school religion teacher stopped by the hospital with a vial of holy water from Lourdes, as did a sister of Mercy. A diocesan priest gave the family a vial of oil blessed by a priest renowned for healing.

“The biggest gift of all is the gift of prayer,” Tom Butler noted. “It is incredibly powerful to have people praying. We were participating in a miracle.”

On June 5, Katrina fully regained consciousness. The index and middle fingers of her right hand and lower left leg, however, had been significantly damaged due to circulatory collapse.

Katrina was transferred to Shriner’s Hospital for Children, where her fingers and foot were surgically examined by a burn specialist. The decision was made to amputate segments of both fingers and the left leg between the knee and ankle.

“I kind of saw it coming,” recalled Katrina of the surgery. “You can’t control it and it’s happened, so you kind of go with it.”

Katrina’s brother, Tom, says his sister tackled her therapy sessions head on, re-learning “simple stuff” like walking with a walker and exercising on parallel bars to strengthen her left leg.

“She was pushing the system. If the occupational therapist told her to do 10 leg raises, she’d do 15 or 20,” he said proudly.

Katrina’s goal was to be home to celebrate her 17th birthday June 28, a goal she reached with a day to spare.

Tom and Sandi Butler say their hearts go out to the parents of four other teens in the Sacramento region who have died in recent months of meningococcal meningitis, among them MaryJo Kwett, who had attended Loretto High School in Sacramento.

In Kwett’s case the disease progressed so rapidly there was only a few hours to respond to warning signs.

However, the majority of people who become ill with meningococcal disease do not die. In Sacramento County there have been 17 cases this year and two deaths.

As for Katrina, she says she doesn’t think in terms of how she survived, but why.

“There has to be a reason. It’s not apparent now but whether I’m a motivational speaker for amputees or medal in the Olympics, I’m sure I’ll figure it out,” she said.

Meantime, there is a senior year of high school to enjoy.

“It’s going to be a great year. I’m going to have fun along with everybody else,” she said, “except there’ll be a lot of questions for a few days.”

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