All the attention given to the West Nile virus has faded over the years, yet it's still out there. An Omaha teen who came down with an extreme case has battled back.

"It's pretty competitive.” Mallory Sleight made it. Two years ago, she beat out thousands of applicants to start her theatre career at New York University.

"It turned into encephalitis and infected my brain.” An infected mosquito had bitten her. She had West Nile virus and doctors caught it too late. "For 22 months I think, I had a 24-hour headache. On a scale of 1-10, it's like a 12, it's just excruciating pain. It was my dream and I thought it was over.”

Doctors prescribed dozens of different drugs with little success. "I couldn't walk for a long time. They had to bring me back to Nebraska in a wheelchair. Basically with West Nile is if you don't die you'll get better."

Better moves in mysterious ways. She went back to college and even started a theatre company called Beauty for Ashes, all while battling the pain.

"To see her filled with joy to do something she dreamt about for years and had nearly given up on and then to see it take place, we cried,” says Mallory’s father, Andrew Sleight.

Out of all of this, it was Botox that managed the pain best. Injections in the forehead were given every seven weeks. "I said she's a real actress now,” says Mallory’s mother, Iris Sleight.

"You're going to learn to laugh or you'll go crazy,” says Mallory’s brother, Ben Sleight. “I got a mosquito bite there. I wasn't supposed to tell you that by the way."

"We have six bottles of mosquito spray," says Iris. It's true, mosquito repellent is handed out like mints at a hotel. There's even a reminder posted on the front door. Someday Mallory, now 19, plans to perform her story of survival on the stage. “I just want to show people what it's like to go through this and I want to give people that have it hope.”

Nebraska has already reported its first case of West Nile. Most people never have symptoms. One of every 150 people who get it will have symptoms similar to Mallory's.

She's going to take a year off from school to work on a fashion Web site. She's in withdrawal now as she works her body off of all those powerful medications. It will take at least a year for that.