Maggie Meier couldn’t feel pain, she couldn’t interact with people, she couldn’t eat, she couldn’t turn over in bed without help and she certainly couldn’t walk.

But for brief periods, the 14-year-old basketball star from Blue Valley Northwest High School in Overland Park, Kan., would awake from her coma and pass a ball in her hospital room with perfect form.

“She was very severely ill,” neurologist Dr. William Graf, who treated Meier in 2008-2009 at a Kansas City hospital, told msnbc.com Friday. “The depth of her coma is not in question. The way she woke up from it is highly unique.”

Maggie’s shooting skills while comatose, and her remarkable recovery, have attracted international attention ever since she and her family went public a couple of weeks ago in the Kansas City Star. 

Graf, professor of neurology and pediatrics at Yale, figures that shooting a basketball must have been hardwired into a part of Maggie’s brain that remained relatively unscathed from illness sparked by a respiratory infection.

“This was a wiped-out memory bank,” he says, “but one thing that wasn’t wiped out was her ability to shoot with perfect form.”

From third grade on, “she probably shot 500 times a day,” he says, emphasizing, “this girl was a star athlete. It needs to be clear that she was super, to the point of being on a national championship team.”

Meier's case was a first for Graf -- and while it might be possible for a comatose concert pianist to be able to play a keyboard before recovering any other ability -- it’s unclear “why someone would have a certain function come back faster than another,” he says.

A high school freshman, Maggie had just lettered in varsity volleyball and was scheduled to play on the school basketball team when she became ill in November 2008. She’d been complaining of a bad headache and then started having nonstop seizures.

It took Graf and his colleagues a few weeks to figure out what was making Maggie so sick. She had a rare brain infection called mycoplasma meningoencephalitis. It's not known how she contracted the illness.

Graf remembered a patient he’d seen in the mid-1990s who had the same infection. That boy went on to make a full recovery. He shared the story with Maggie’s parents, with whom he’d bonded over their shared love of girls’ basketball. Graf has a daughter who plays college basketball.

“This is a bad illness,” Graf told them. “We need to support her through this. You’re going to have to be very patient.” After she’d been in a coma for two months, though, Graf says, even he was starting to get cold feet.

Maggie spent 100 days in the hospital, her mother Margaret, a nurse, by her side the entire time, Graf says. After coming out of the coma, she spent eight months learning how to walk and read again. “When I saw her five months out, I was thinking we’re looking at moderate disability here.” She was still drooling, and the former honors student could barely read a Dr. Seuss book. “I thought she’d need a lot of special education.”

But Maggie surpassed everyone’s expectations. “This girl is a fighter. And, like a little kid, she reprogrammed her brain.”

Although she missed her freshman year, her teachers helped Maggie regain her reading ability and is graduating with her class this year. She’ll attend college in the fall. Her best physical therapy, Graf says, has been her return to the basketball court and participation on the varsity team.

Says Graf, “If you’re an optimist, the cup is 90 percent, 95 percent full here.”

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No matter your political views, you probably couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for Gov. Rick Perry’s memory hiccup during Wednesday night’s CNBC Republican presidential debate. Sorry and perhaps a little empathetic.

For the life of him, Perry couldn’t remember the name of the third federal agency he’d abolish as president. Commerce, Education, and, and, and. Nothing. Someone suggested “EPA,” and Perry briefly appeared to consider that possibility. By the time reporter John Hardwood asked him what that third agency was, Perry seemed to have forgotten even Commerce.

We might call such incidents “senior moments,” but they happen to people of all ages, says Gayatri Devi, director of the New York Memory and Healthy Aging Services. It’s just that few people experience them on live TV.

“I don’t think we can make too much of it,” says Devi, a board-certified neurologist and psychiatrist. “This is a very human error. I don’t think it’s portentous of any memory problems.”

Perry, who’s 61, probably had several factors working against him, Devi speculates.

Story: Perry's debate brain freeze looms large

For one, she says, the guy is running for president and has tons of stuff to remember. Just because he blanked on the name of that third agency (Department of Energy, by the way) doesn’t mean he’s unfamiliar with the details of his own platform, Devi says. “Haven’t you ever forgotten your home telephone number?” (My hand is up.)

Plus, the stress of everything going on in his life right now probably doesn’t help. While a little stress can keep you on your game, Devi says, too much can hinder your performance.

Perry’s lapse does probably mean that he didn’t rehearse enough, she says. As anyone who’s ever given a talk knows, practice, practice, practice helps get you closer to perfect.

On top of that, you have to figure that Perry, a governor running for the presidential nomination, probably isn’t getting enough zzz’s. As Devi says, “the most important thing for remembering is a good night’s sleep.”

 Catnaps probably aren’t enough, she says, because it’s “slow-wave”-- or deep sleep—that’s needed to help make memories stick. “What your grandmother said is true: Get a good night’s sleep. Especially before a presidential debate.”

Readers, let's sympathize with the guy for a second. When's the last time you had a brain freeze? Leave a comment telling us about it -- if we like your story, we may use it in an upcoming Body Odd post!

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