GRAND FORKS (AP) - The wife of Grand Forks state Sen. Nick Hacker is fighting a rare blood disease.

Elizabeth Hacker is suffering from hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis, or HLH. She became ill less than a month after the two were married in August. Doctors found her blood had trouble clotting.

Elizabeth Hacker, a Langdon native who teaches speech pathology the Larimore elementary school, had blood transfusions and surgery to fight infection, and had been unconscious for weeks. Last week, her family reported some signs of improvement, and she could communicate with her husband for the first time in months.

She's hospitalized in the intensive care unit of Fairview Medical Center in Minneapolis.

"Life goes above and beyond politics and careers," Nick Hacker said. "The most precious things are love and health."

The virus is diagnosed as HLH only in about 1 out of every million infants. That Hacker is an adult with HLH is even more rare, said Dr. Michael Burke, a specialist in pediatric hematology and oncology at the University of Minnesota Fairview Children's Hospital.

Hacker's friends and sorority sisters at the University of North Dakota are organizing fundraisers and giving blood. Her family has ordered pink bracelets with the words "LizStrong" on them.