‘She’s such a good kid’
Palos Hills athlete who had a spinal stroke at age 16 is determined to recover
Meilita Pilkionis, 16, plays piano and dabbles in painting. She relishes a good meal from Chik-fil-A, and Starbucks’ Pink Drink. Although she’s not a big reader, she likes math, and she’s looking forward to hanging out with her friends when she is back on her feet — literally.
Pilkionis suffered a spinal stroke in November that paralyzed her — all feeling and movement from the neck down was gone. It’s a day ingrained in the mind of her mother, Indre Petrauskaite, a Palos Hills resident.
“It was a Wednesday,” she said. “It started like 8 p.m., and she was in the hospital at 3 a.m.”
According to Dr. David Chen, section chief of spinal cord injury for Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, although spinal strokes aren’t as common as strokes in the brain, spinal strokes occur for similar reasons as brain strokes — loss of blood flow or a bleed. A disruption in the blood can cause injury or damage to tissues and can block messages (nerve impulses) traveling along the spinal cord. Petrauskaite said her daughter’s nerves didn’t get oxygen, which is carried by blood.
“Typically, individuals who develop spinal strokes are usually middle to older age individuals,” Chen said.
“Young individuals are a little bit more unusual and rare. It’s those individuals where, oftentimes, you can’t find underlying reasons why an individual this young would develop a condition like this.”
Pilkionis, a player on the Amos Alonzo Stagg High School tennis team, recalls the “weird” back pain she felt prior to her stroke. Her mom said she complained about her shoulder blades hurting. For an athlete who had never had any health concerns, the stroke came out of nowhere, Petrauskaite said.
“I went to go to sleep, and I couldn’t lay down because it started to hurt so bad and everything started to go numb,” she said. “When I got to the hospital, all I could say was, ‘Air, I need air.’ And then I passed out.”
Chen said there seldom are any hereditary factors in spinal strokes, but usually there are warning signs. They can be as subtle as changes in sensation to pain or mild weakness in extremities. And for athletes like Pilkionis, the challenge is catching those early signs and symptoms in someone used to a high level of discomfort or pain they think of as “just part of what I usually experience” because of strenuous activity.
When Pilkionis had the spinal stroke, she couldn’t talk or move a finger, and could barely move her head, said Petrauskaite, who’s been at her side every day since then. The day after the stroke, Pilkionis’ tennis trainer Robert Slezak started a GoFundMe for her. The goal: $100,000 for Pilkionis’ recovery, rehabilitation and needed equipment. Over $65,000 had been raised as of Monday.
“When we come back home, I need to prepare the house for her . ... Maybe buy a special car . ... I hope she will be so much better, but you never know,” Petrauskaite said.
Petrauskaite said her daughter will stay at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab until March 25, but Pilkionis is determined not to come home in a wheelchair. Instead, she’s making plans to pick up where she left off — hanging out with friends.
“I miss driving around and the feeling of walking and being able to shower on my own every day,” Pilkionis said. “I’m going to try teaching my little brother how to play tennis.”
Since November, Pilkionis has made strides in her recuperation. Now at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, Pilkionis is doing rehabilitation the majority of each day, according to her mom. It took Pilkionis a month and a half to talk, and now she is off the ventilator for three hours a day. Pilkionis says her right side is getting stronger, but her left side is “not waking up still.”
Gov. J.B. Pritzker made a Zoom call to Pilkionis over the Christmas holidays to lift her spirits. In between Snapchat, TikTok and Face-Time, Pilkionis got to see Kamala Harris get sworn in as vice president and managed to watch the ABC medical drama “Grey’s Anatomy” from the beginning through Season 12 during her therapy sessions (four more seasons to go).
“She’s such a good kid . ... All the time with me helping with little brother, she’s enjoying and playing tennis and doing homework and playing piano,” Petrauskaite said. “She always asks me why this happened to me? I was a good kid and in school, everything.”
Help from family and friends is getting both mother and daughter through this. Petrauskaite’s sister traveled from Lithuania to help care for her 2-year-old son, Edward (who Pilkionis has only been able to see through FaceTime since her stroke.) Slezak, who used to see Pilkionis up to five times a week on the tennis courts, stays in touch with Petrauskaite “pretty much every day through text or call.”
Chen said atherosclerotic disease can be an underlying condition that causes some spinal strokes.
“A narrowing of the arteries and the vessels that go to the spinal cord can be sufficient enough to cause a loss of blood flow to that area and therefore cause the spinal stroke,” he said. Chen added that spinal stroke victims oftentimes can recover very well, and even if they don’t, they’re able to resume as close to a normal life, in terms of function, as someone who doesn’t have this condition.
“Everything is fine one day, and the next, your whole world can change. And it can happen so unexpectedly, it’s just a weird feeling,” Pilkionis said. “You don’t think it’s ever going to happen to you. And then when it does, you look at things from a different perspective, you know?”
Meilita’s mom said her daughter is accepting cards and well-wishes at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, 355 E. Erie St., Chicago, Room 1826.