The five-year-old boy was dying. It was perhaps the darkest chapter in the life
of the young man who eventually become a member of the Backstreet Boys. Brian
Littrell, now nearly 21 and one of the boys fivesome, almost never had the chance
to become a musician. In fact, he almost never saw his sixth birthday.
"I was born with a heart murmur," Brian explains. "I have a hole in my heart. I lived the first five years of my life with this hole in my heart, and the docters didn't know." That is, until one fateful day in 1980. Brian was playing in Lexington, Kentucky neighborhood with his eight-year-old brother, Harold, Jr. "We were just goofing around," Brian recounts. Then the future musician stumbled and cracked his skull on concrete. Though he didn't knock unconscious, Herold and Jackie, thought their young son might have a concussion. So they immediately sped of to the hospital.
It turned out that getting his a gash gave him septacemia ("Don't ask me how to spell it," Brian begs), which is a fancy term for infected blood. Actually, Brian's infected blood had an even fancier title. "Bacterialindocaridus," he guesses, again pleading, "Don't ask me how to spell it." What ever Brian's infection was, the virus that had entered his five-year-old bloodstream was definitely deadly and threatened to overtake his entire body. "I had no chance of living whatsoever," Brian recalls. "The doctors were telling my mother and father to go ahead and make the funeral arrangements."
There has to be hope, his parents argued. There has to be a chance our little boy will live. The doctors agreed, but told them that even if Brian lived it could hardly be called living. His destiny appeared to have changed from that of a lively, energetic boy into a barely-moving, braindead child.
But to the stunned shock of the staff of the Good Samaritan Hosiptal, medicine and possibly a miracle-somehow defeated the virus, allowing Brian to make the comeback of his life.
Though he is strong and fit and singing with his cousin Kevin Richardson and friends Nick Carter, A.J McLean and Howie Dorough these days, he's never forgotten his close call. This might explain why the group often visits the hospital when they are on tour. "I think that's why God gave me the gift to sing, so I can bless other people's lives,"Brian suggests.
The singer is grateful that he has use of his lungs other than to serve as a back-up for a respirator. He's grateful to be turning 21 this February 20. And he's even found that some good has come from his harrowing near-death experience. "It builds character," Brian says, "and makes you realize how fortunate you are to have your health."
