The night before his surgery, Rancho Bernardo’s Sam Moehlig woke up several times. “Then I’d see it’s 2 in the morning and go back to bed.”

He rose at 4:30 for breakfast, his last meal before his 2 p.m. operation in a Thousand Oaks clinic. Going under the knife, the 14-year-old said later, “was kind of like a dream.”

Read more in the Los Angeles Times.