Brad Seaburg remembers the “crisis,” a real-life crisis, that happened on Presidents Day this year.

Strangely, it may have saved Elias Berthelsen’s life, which was already complicated enough.

Cary-Grove’s football team had a 6 a.m. workout that Monday, Feb. 17, when Berthelsen, a diminutive defensive back and well-liked teammate on the Trojans team, approached Seaburg with worried eyes and locked them on his coach.

Berthelsen could barely breathe.

“It was a tough workout, but it wasn’t anything that was overly crazy,” said Seaburg, C-G’s head football coach. “When Elias told me, ‘I think I’m going through a crisis,’ I knew he was going through a crisis, because Elias doesn’t talk that much. He was sitting on the ground, and he couldn’t really talk. I said, ‘Hey, if you can’t talk, I’m going to call the ambulance and take you to the hospital, because I’m getting worried.’ ”

Berthelsen was born with sickle cell anemia, which is common in Black people in the United States, and, thus, is prone to crises, which can cause severe pain in the body and can have multiple triggers. For Berthelsen, extreme cold and dehydration often are his triggers, but not always.

Seaburg made the call. Berthelsen was rushed to the emergency room at Advocate Good Shepherd Hospital in Barrington, where his adoptive mother, Angie Berthelsen, was waiting.

“All he needed was pain medicine,” Angie said of Elias, who was eventually transferred to Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago.

When Elias needs to be taken to the ER for a crisis he’s experiencing, he doesn’t necessarily need tests to be done. But that day, doctors, for reasons Angie is unsure of, did tests.

“I was annoyed with the ER doctor that he was doing all of these tests, because it was not necessary,” Angie said. “But thank God he did.”

A few days later, the blood test revealed that Elias had Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

“I guess I was a little angry and sad,” Elias said. “I was angry mainly because I knew I would miss some football. I was sad because I knew what I was going to go through.”

Today, Elias, or “E-Berth” as his friends call him, is happy.

He underwent four treatments of chemotherapy over the summer and barely missed any football. A member of Seaburg’s program since his freshman year, the senior is playing on varsity for the second season in a row, mainly as a special-teams contributor, although the 5-foot-4, 155-pound backup DB did get some snaps in C-G’s Week 3 win over McHenry in Cary.

“I just love the intensity [of football],” Elias said after a recent practice. “The passion I have for football is crazy. I like being out here with my teammates and competing.”

The Trojans love having him, especially after his cancer diagnosis earlier this year.

“I kid him that our workout saved his life,” said Seaburg, smiling.

Angie Berthelsen may be the biggest reason why Elias has the life he does today.

She and her former spouse welcomed Elias into their home when he was 14 months old after he had been in foster care for about six months. They fostered Elias until they adopted him when he was almost 3.

“She’s a really great mom,” Elias said of Angie. “She’s always pushing me to be the best version of myself.”

Sickle cell anemia is a genetic blood disorder that causes red blood cells to become crescent-shaped (sickle-shaped). The abnormal cells can block blood flow, leading to pain, organ damage and other complications.

“It’s a bigger deal than people think it is,” Angie said.

Knowing that Elias had SCD (sickle cell disease), or that he is Black, however, never deterred Angie, who’s white, and her then-spouse to take legal and physical custody of him. He was going to be a part of their family, period.

“We didn’t care,” Angie said. “I always wanted to foster, since I was a little girl. I just thought, ‘Whoever they bring to us is who’s meant to be with us.’ We met him the next day.”

Elias has been loved ever since then. And now, maybe more than ever, as he is the big brother in a large, blended family.

Angie and her husband, Eric Thrasher, live in Cary and have nine children, with Elias, 17, being the oldest. Angie also has 15-year-old twin boys, Emmett and Finn, and Sawyer from her previous relationship. Eric has Mav, Cort, Jax and Chey [the only girl among the nine] from his previous union. Angie and Eric have one child together, Luca, who is 3.

That’s a big Elias Berthelsen fan club.

“In the beginning, he was a very traumatized little boy,” Angie said of Elias. “He went through a lot. If I really think hard about it now, years later, I could sit and cry about it. At the time, I was just trying to get through it.”

Raising a child with SCD hasn’t been easy. When that child is a fighter, it helps.

“He was abused in the foster home that he was in before us, and every day he would cry and scream for a half hour at 2 o’clock [p.m.],” Angie said. “No matter where we were, no matter what we were doing, we would just take him in the car and drive, and listen to music.”

Angie says Elias used to be terrified of taking baths. Now, he’s showered with love and support from his teammates, friends and football-team-sized family.

“He’s turned out to be a really great kid, and he’s gone through a lot,” Angie said. “Sickle cell has been hard. It’s hard for him to play football.”

Then came Presidents Day this year.

Hodgkin’s lymphoma affects the lymphatic system, which is a network of nodes and vessels that help fight infection. The cancer is common in people who have SCD.

Doctors found enlarged lymph nodes in Elias’ chest back in February and performed surgery to remove them. Scans revealed a tumor, which turned out to be benign, on his kidney.

“That was a very scary time,” Angie said. “It was weeks of not knowing.”

Elias admits he didn’t handle the news well.

“My mom just told me to hope for the best and don’t think about the future, just think about now,” he said.

The football player knows how to tackle adversity.

Elias’ cancer diagnosis provided another opportunity, albeit unwanted, to show his perseverance again. The pain caused by SCD can surface anywhere in the body, but Elias tends to get it in his back, legs and arms. Sometimes the pain can be treated at home with medication. Sometimes, like on Presidents Day this year, he needs to be taken to the ER.

Elias has missed school, including two weeks in a row once.

“It wears down your internal organs,” Angie said.

It’s Elias’ life. He copes, he flashes that big smile of his, he understands what he has to do to get through every day. Student-athletes have to be disciplined. Elias just has to be more disciplined than others.

“I just got to take care of myself a little more than everyone else,” Elias said.

Seaburg, a social science teacher, has had Elias in class. He’s seen a kid who demonstrates responsibility, who doesn’t complain about his circumstances but, instead, accepts them.

“He would never let anything in his life be an excuse why he couldn’t do certain things,” Seaburg said. “When he would be gone for extended periods of time [because of a crisis], he was always very diligent about getting his homework in. He never needed a lot of prodding at all. It was just, ‘All right, I’m going to get this stuff done.’ ”

Elias’ Hodgkin’s diagnosis required a port [a small, implanted device] to be placed in his chest so doctors could administer the chemotherapy. That makes wearing football shoulder pads tough and playing the game tougher. Elias, who’s been playing football since he was about 6 or 7, got through it.

“When he got cancer, he wanted to quit everything,” Angie said. “I said, ‘Absolutely not. You love [football]. You’re going to stick with it. We’re going to modify it.’ ”

Angie is a health and fitness coach. She knows there are solutions to pain and discomfort. Where there’s a will, there’s a way to endure.

“I told [Elias], ‘You can work around this. You can rest when you need to rest, but when you’re feeling good, there’s no reason that you shouldn’t be playing,’ ” Angie said. “He just couldn’t tackle because he had the port in his chest [for the chemo].”

Cary-Grove’s football players do conditioning Saturdays after games. They run laps around the football field. If you want to find Elias, look for a large group of Trojans. They have one eye on “E-Berth.”

“Coach Schlueter runs the conditioning,” Seaburg said of assistant coach Dean Schlueter. “One day, he said, ‘Watch what the guys do with Elias. They run with him.’ ”

Teammates look out for each other, no matter where that teammate is on the depth chart, no matter his skin color, no matter his background.

As a coin-toss captain, Elias looks out for his teammates. He called “tails” before C-G’s Week 2 kickoff against Burlington Central, and, sure enough, the coin landed on “tails.”

“I’m 1 for 1,” said Elias, smiling.

Elias, however, would prefer tossing opponents. He may be little, but he enjoys making a big hit on the football field.

“His squat max is pretty high,” Seaburg said. “He likes to hit, and he likes to make contact.”

Twenty years ago, the life expectancy for someone with SCD was 30 years old. Now, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the median age at death for people with SCD is about 60 years.

But that’s about the furthest thing from Elias’ mind, along with his plans once he graduates high school. He has a chest scan in December to see if his cancer is still gone.

In the meantime, he plays football, takes life day to day, appreciating all of it.

He’ll always have a home.

“I just want him to enjoy his senior year,” Angie said. “When we found out he had cancer, that was my biggest concern. It’s his last chance to play football, so this is all I care about. We don’t need to figure out everything else right now.”

The Trojans have a home football game Friday night against Crystal Lake Central at Al Bohrer Field. For now, that’s all that matters.

And the coin toss.