Ingalls athletic director Shelly Whipple calls Shae Maxwell a “walking miracle.”

Considering the initial prognosis for Maxwell after she suffered a spinal stroke on Feb. 27th, Whipple’s description of the Ingalls sophomore isn't an exaggeration. 

Maxwell’s world was turned upside down when she suffered the spinal stroke, a disruption in the blood supply to the spinal cord, which caused sudden paralysis that doctors once feared could be permanent. 

“The first prognosis they told my parents was: 'We hope that she can sit up in a wheelchair.  We think she will be in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. We don’t know if she’ll be able to push it, but she might be able to sit in one,' ” Maxwell said. “That was kind of their goal for me, being able to sit up.”

Maxwell blew that goal out of the water and continues to make remarkable progress in her recovery. 

After spending two months in the hospital, Maxwell eventually learned to walk without assistance again. A multi-sport athlete before the stroke, she can now cheer again and serves as a manager for the basketball team. 

“Right now is definitely not a place that I would expect to be –  farther than they thought I would ever get in life,” said Maxwell, the CapFed® True Blue® Student of the Week.

“She worked so hard to get back to where she is today,” Whipple said. “Probably none of us know just how much she fights to get through the school day and everything else. She always has a positive attitude with a smile on her face. She really is just an amazing individual.”

The events of last February are still surreal to Maxwell. 

She was cleaning at home on an off day from school when she started to feel odd. 

“I would say I have a pretty decent pain tolerance," Maxwell said, “so I really don’t think about those things. I was like, ‘Oh, must be sore from practice. 

“I was vacuuming and my arm started going limp. I was like, ‘What the heck?’ And I got this severe migraine. It was very, very bad. I just could not figure out what was wrong.”

After taking a pain reliever, Maxwell took a nap. When she woke up, she could hardly get out of bed and began experiencing pain in her arms and legs. 

“I called my parents (Aaron and Audrey) and I was crying,” she said. “And they knew something was wrong because I don’t ever cry. My dad thought I had a heart attack because I was saying my arms were hurting.”

Her mother left work in Cimarron to take Shae to the emergency room in Garden City, a 30-minute drive. 

Once there, Maxwell’s condition continued to deteriorate. 

“I couldn’t walk in, they put me in a wheelchair,” she said. “They moved me into a room. They wanted to do an MRI so I laid down for the MRI. When I went to get up, I couldn’t even move at all. I was completely paralyzed.

Maxwell was then life-flighted to Denver, where doctors were perplexed. 

“Everybody was just so confused at that point,” Maxwell said. “I was actually doing a lot better and I was starting to talk again and everybody was kind of getting excited. And then once I got to the ER it was kind of going downhill again. 

“I stopped talking as much and still couldn’t really move. They took me up to the ICU. I really don’t remember a lot from there. I think I was there for three days. I had a lot of oxygen going in me because I couldn’t really breathe on my own.”

Maxwell still couldn’t move for the next couple of days.

“I got up for the first time out of bed on the fourth and fifth day, and I just remember that being the hardest thing that I’ve ever done in my life, trying to sit up for the first time,” she said. “It’s the weirdest feeling. It was so hard.

“They finally got me up and put me in this super supportive wheelchair. They wheeled me out to the big windows they had at the end of the hall, and I looked at the mountains. The sun was so bright because I hadn’t seen it in a while.”

Soon, Maxwell would start making incremental progress. 

“Every day was something new that I would have to try to do,” she said. “It got easier over time. I kind of got used to it. 

“The changes then were a lot faster. One day my left toe would be moving, the next day it might not be. Then three days later, all my toes would be moving.”

Maxwell said she started walking again with some assistance a few months after the spinal stroke. She can now walk normally but still has room for improvement.

“My left side is mostly affected,” she said. “My right side is pretty much normal. I don’t really have any problems with my right side. My left side is what weighs me down. When I’m cheering, my left knee will start hurting or something like that. And my left arm doesn’t go up all the way by my ears and above my head.”

As a freshman before the stroke, Maxwell had a jam-packed schedule. She had competed in cheer, dance, volleyball and basketball and had planned on running track. 

She’s cherished the ability to cheer again and serve as basketball manager. 

“It feels great that they let me out there and do those things," she said. 

Maxwell said doctors are still baffled by the root cause of the spinal stroke. 

“They don’t know what happened, but whatever it was, it was so rare,"  Maxwell said. “It’s only happened a few times to people. Especially my age, it’s very rare that something like that would happen to a healthy teenager.”

Remarkably, Maxwell managed to keep her spirits high, even when the outlook looked bleak. 

“I don’t know if it was being an athlete that gave me the mindset I had or just how I was raised,” she said. “But the whole time I never got disappointed or down. I was just ready to get out of there.

“I just focused on the positive. I didn’t ever think about anything negative I guess.”

Whipple said Maxwell’s classmates had a difficult time processing the situation in the days following her stroke. 

“It was hard to even think about it,” she said. 

The school and community rallied behind Maxwell, organizing fundraisers and sending well wishes. 

“It was amazing,” Maxwell said. “When I was in the hospital so many people contacted my parents, contacted me. It just really showed how much people in a small community care about you. That was probably a big thing that helped me get out of there, the amount of people that cared about me.

“Every day, I would get letters from my classmates and people from the school. I loved reading the letters every day.”

Whipple said Maxwell continues to serve as inspiration for the Bulldogs. 

“I’m sure there are days when she doesn’t want to get out of bed, but she just always has that smile on her face,” Whipple said. “The other student-athletes, if they have a hurt foot or a hurt finger, I think they take a step back and think they really don’t have anything to complain about if Shae can do what she did.”

Maxwell recently experienced a thrill late last October thanks to Dream on 3, a nonprofit organization dedicated to making sports-themed dreams come true for children and young adults living with life-altering conditions.

The school surprised Maxwell with news that she would be taking part in Kansas State’s homecoming festivities. She met legendary Wildcat coach Bill Snyder and experienced a day as a K-State cheerleader. The weekend also included a tour of the K-State football facilities, a visit to Sunset Zoo, trick-or-treating in Aggieville and watching the Homecoming parade and attending a K-State volleyball game.

“I was blown away because I didn’t know this was going to happen, so I was shocked and excited. It was real fun,” Maxwell said. 

Maxwell still has short-term and long-term goals she’s looking to complete in her recovery. 

“Goals are really important,” she said. “That’s how I got through everything, with goals. Running is probably my biggest goal, because I loved to run before. I liked to weight lift, too, so being able to do both of those things would be amazing. Those would be my biggest goals. 

“Right now, I want to strengthen my left side to where I could do a cheer kick how I used to do them.”

She said going through the ordeal has given her a new perspective in some ways. 

“I thought I was pretty accepting and stuff before, but after being in an environment with so many kids that had it so much worse than I did … I just look at everybody, and I just can’t come to judge anybody,” Maxwell said. “They don’t know the things that I deal with on a daily – they might think I look fine. And I don’t know what they’re going through on a daily. They might look perfectly normal but they might be going through a battle. 

“I find it really hard to judge anybody. Everybody has something to deal with. I just probably accept everybody a lot more now.”