'I stopped breathing': Rice's Lucy Stillman defies odds, returns to sidelines

A life-threatening virus seized control of Lucy Stillman as her father slammed the alarm and nurses descended on Room 116.

Meningitis stopped Stillman’s heart after nearly a week at The University of Vermont Medical Center. Her family was ushered out of the fifth-floor room. Nurses began chest compressions as life-saving measures on the then 24-year-old.

The response was quick as Stillman regained a pulse and was transferred into the Intensive Care Unit for a gut-wrenching three days.

“They were taking some blood for tests and I’m just sitting in bed, and I just looked at my mom and I said I'm so sad. And then right after that I went into cardiac arrest,” Stillman said.

The Rice Memorial High School field hockey alum began showing signs, debilitating back pain and headaches, of the infection in the days leading to Aug. 28, 2021. Stillman sought medical help and was checked for a possible kidney infection days prior and then returned to the St. Lawrence University field hockey team. Stillman played with the Saints for four years and was coaching as a graduate assistant at the time.

Her condition worsened as the Saints traveled to St. Michael's College for an exhibition tilt in Colchester. That Saturday, the 28th, Stillman could hardly stand as her father brought her to UVMMC. When they reached the hospital, Stillman needed a wheelchair as the infection was surrounding her spinal cord.

Just a few days later Stillman was fighting for her life.

“My dad slammed the Code Blue button … I stopped breathing,” Stillman, 26, said.

Her father, Scott, remembers the moment vividly.

“It felt like an hour later, but it was probably 60 seconds or less and (the doctors) said we have a pulse,” Scott Stillman said. “(Lucy’s mother) and I were just standing there hugging each other and crying.”

Meningitis is a swelling of membranes covering the brain and spinal cord. The infection, which can take various forms, causes fluid to surround the areas creating the swelling, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

After a stint in the ICU, UVMMC quickly transferred Stillman to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

“It was pretty up-and-down for a few days,” Stillman said of her admission at UVMMC. “I would feel good one day and then the next basically watching the clock for my next dose of medication for pain.”

In the two years since, Stillman has returned to the sidelines and has recovered all her cognitive function along with physical healing that surpassed everything doctors imagined possible.

“I have excellent function, but my nerves I just can't necessarily feel very well,” Stillman said. “And that is actually pretty much a story for a lot of my body. I have excellent function and things move perfectly, but I have a loss of sensation.”

'Fearing the worst': Stillman transferred to Mass General

Stillman was airlifted, while unresponsive to communications, to Boston where she would spend about a month. The Stillmans were unaware of Lucy’s condition during the helicopter transfer other than doctors said she was unresponsive.

“We were doing 80 miles an hour in my pickup truck and just fearing the worst and that we're just going to arrive to the worst possible situation,” Scott Stillman said.

Varsity Insider: Who is No. 1 in our Vermont high school field hockey rankings?

Friends and family were grasping for any information and her sister, Addie, made the cross-country trip from Oregon to see her.

“Lucy getting sick, I just I couldn't really believe it. It didn't really seem like it could be happening to her because she was the fittest person I knew,” the older Stillman said.

The duo's bond, forged from growing up together in Fairfax and just two years separating them, paid dividends as an intubated Lucy struggled communicating via lip-reading and letter boards.

“The thing that kind of struck me right away was that I was able to understand her the best out of anyone even on the nursing staff with her lip-reading,” Addie Stillman said. “I was able to help her communicate a little bit more as she was kind of coming out of the first initial haze after being intubated and having all of these surgeries that were essentially to save her life.”

The staff at Mass General noticed that Stillman had a brain herniation and there was pressure on the spinal column. A craniectomy was necessary. The major surgery left a six-inch scar from the base of her head to her neck.

“It was such an extreme case that they needed more manpower,” Stillman said of the transfer.

The completely healthy former collegiate athlete began to recover as her immune system fought the virus. The bout left her paralyzed from the neck down until the first week of October.

And the doctor’s prognosis was grim: Never walk again and hopeful for some upper-body function.

“After that (the surgery) they saw a lot of positive signs in their terms, but not necessarily positive in our terms,” Lucy Stillman said. “The plus was that I was alive, and they anticipated that I regain my brain function and my communication abilities.”

But for Lucy, who never found out how she contracted meningitis, or which form the virus took, that was never going to be enough.

“It wasn't really, it was never an option for me to live a life in a chair or be incapacitated,” Stillman said. “At least mentally I just wasn't there, it didn't cross my mind that it was an option.”

Addie Stillman was the first one to say what the family was thinking as her sister laid in a medically induced state. That regardless of the prognosis, a beat-the-odds recovery for Lucy was inevitable.

“I was debating whether I should even say it out loud to my mom, but I said, ‘I think she'll walk again.’

“We were all kind of on the same page. There’s not much she’ll take no (as an answer) for.”

Long-term rehabilitation

After leaving Mass General, Stillman was admitted to Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Charlestown, Massachusetts, for 12 weeks of in-patient care and six weeks of out-patient.

At Spaulding, around the first week of October, Stillman busted the odds and began to move her left arm and her feet followed.

“My dad always likes to reflect that, he was just praying for, hoping for one thumb to wake up so that I could move a (wheelchair) on my own if it came to that,” Lucy Stillman said. “To just have that tiny, tiny amount of independence.”

On Dec. 23 she walked out of Spaulding, with the help of a walker, and began the next phase of physical training. Stillman often took on extra sessions, the aggressive training has helped her short- and long-term prospects of recovery.

“Anybody who didn't make their PT slot, she would take their slot and get two sessions in a day, so she took advantage of any opportunity to push herself even if the doctors gave her no hope,” Kelly McClintock, who coached Stillman at Rice, said.

Stillman said she hasn't lost old memories: She still quotes Disney’s "Ratatouille," one of her favorite movies, by heart.

“The really great thing for me is I didn't lose any memories or any ability to recall or memorize,” Stillman said. “I think it was really valuable to me because I think if I lost pieces of my mind, I think I would have even felt more like I've lost parts of myself.”

A full recovery isn’t impossible for Stillman as her family knows not to doubt a miracle in the making. She recently received an eye-correction surgery that allowed her to drive again, and she visited her sister in Oregon this past month. The Stillmans have adopted the phrase, “it could be worse” and haven’t taken anything for granted.

“I would say the prognosis right now is, what I'm going to make of it and what I'm going to make of it is that I'm going to work my ass off,” Stillman said. “I'm not comfortable where I am and I think that's kind of reflective of how I've been my whole life.”

Return to the Green Knights

Lucy Stillman connected with McClintock this offseason and the pair are back on the same sideline.

Stillman joined the Green Knights staff nine years after scoring over 100 goals in her career in South Burlington and lifting the Division II trophy in 2014.

Stillman, who made the Free Press’ first team all-state her senior year, tallied 17 goals and 18 assists in her last fall with McClintock. The undeniable work ethic and skill carried to St. Lawrence where she had 25 goals and 18 assists in 60 games.

“One thing that we were missing last year was finishing,” McClintock said of her team. “I appreciate bringing in another forward and I wanted to get some more fire on the forward line to be a threat on the scoreboard.”

The addition of Stillman, who shared her story with the team at the beginning of the year, has helped as Rice is off to a 6-2-1 start and has scored at least two goals in almost every game. Stillman also aided the Green Knight outfit, a young and ambitious group, strengthening their mental fortitude.

“The biggest reason I wanted to bring her back is she's such an inspirational person,” McClintock said. “And I think there is so much that the girls can learn from her and making every single moment and second count and how to overcome adversity.”

Said Scott Stillman: “I think Lucy has a message that needs to be shared. And I think her experience, strength and hope should be encouraging to these young ladies.”

Stillman’s St. Lawrence teammate and Mount Abraham Union High School graduate, Bailey Sherwin, attributed her friend’s return to the Green Knights as a natural healing process as she continues rehabbing.

“I feel like coaching is part of her recovery, because she was a coach before she got sick and always was close to the game,” said Sherwin, who also coaches at Rice. “She's been so involved as an athlete and now as a coach and I think that it was a necessary step for her to continue on in her recovery.”

Stillman continues her weekly physical training sessions with the same commitment she held on the field hockey turf.

“A lot of the work has come in the year and a half after,” Lucy Stillman said. “I hate for that to get lost because that's really when a lot of the external effort has come where we haven't had the support of a hospital staff. It's really been our family against it all, figuring out how we're going to make the best for this and keep the needle moving towards progress.”

Become a member of the Vermont Varsity Insider Facebook group at https://bit.ly/2MGSfvX. 

Contact Jacob Rousseau at JRousseau@gannett.com. Follow on Twitter: @ByJacobRousseau.

This article originally appeared on Burlington Free Press: 'I stopped breathing': Rice's Lucy Stillman defies medical odds