PITTSBURGH (AP) — Regaining consciousness, Meghan Wilson found herself sliding across the ice on her stomach and feeling a buzzing pins-and-needles feeling, shoulders down, similar to a funny bone being bumped. The evaporating tingle was the last sensation she has felt below her shoulders since Dec. 26, 1996.

Along with brother Russ, the energized 17-year-old high school senior had taken the final run down a Snowshoe Mountain Ski Resort slope in West Virginia, deciding near the bottom to ski over a mogul, which proved larger than expected. Her best guess is, the mogul caused the tip of a ski to fly back and strike her forehead, knocking her out long enough to prevent her from breaking her fall. Apparently she landed on her stomach, her body arcing, hyper-extending her neck. It broke her fifth vertebrae, crushing the spinal cord.