Victoria's road

As a child, she suffered from a mysterious illness. But now she's headed for a brighter future.

When she was 11, Vickie Tolman had an ailment that left her unable to walk or talk. Today, she works with children at Franciscan Hospital. (Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff)

Boston is a medical mecca where miracles occur daily. Where patients, some heartbreakingly young, travel from all over the world for state-of-the-art diagnosis and treatment.

Not every ending is a happy one, to be sure. Yet relatively few medical mysteries go unsolved, leaving patients and families to wonder what, how, why.

Tonight at a downtown hotel, 22-year-old Victoria Tolman will walk to the podium and accept a Profile in Children's Courage Award from Franciscan Hospital for Children. Her speech promises to be memorable, whatever she chooses to say.

Eleven years ago, Tolman could not speak at all. Or walk. To this day, her doctors and family are not sure why.

Her father, Steven Tolman, a state senator from Brighton, has seldom spoken about his daughter's condition publicly. Anticipating tonight's event, he agreed to, revisiting times in his family life that are as emotionally difficult as they are medically baffling.

"The bottom line is, we just don't know what hit us," he says, sitting in a hospital conference room next to Vickie, the eldest of his three children. "The good news is, it hasn't hit us again."

What befell not only Vickie but her brother Steven, too, he adds, "is every parent's worst nightmare, three times over."

Her speech labored yet clear, her bright eyes brimming with life, Vickie herself looks back on her medical ordeal with mixed emotions. "It made me who I am today," she says in response to a question about its impact. "Determined to go to college, to finish college. To be successful."

Still, painful memories linger, she acknowledges. Why, she recalls thinking at the time, had she been struck such a devastating blow for the second time in her young life?

"An 11-year-old, you're just becoming your own person," she says, peeling away the years. "I'd started a new school two, no six, weeks before. I was making new friends. It's Halloween. My friends are out trick-or-treating. I'm in a hospital bed, frozen inside my body, basically. I can't even tell my parents how angry I am. How sad I am. How scared I am."

The mystery began on Jan. 13, 1991, when Vickie was 5. She woke up with flu-like symptoms and what her father describes as "heavy eyes." She was admitted to Boston's Children's Hospital and was put through a battery of tests. At one point doctors suspected Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare autoimmune disorder that can lead to paralysis. No definitive diagnosis was made, however, or ever would be.

"Basically," says Steven Tolman, "they were just ruling out all the bad stuff."

Four years passed by. On March 19, 1995, her brother Steven, who'd just turned 8, came down with a similar set of symptoms. He, too, was rushed to Children's Hospital for treatment and testing, a clinical investigation that would stretch out over several years. While specialists suspected a genetic component behind the two attacks, they could not pinpoint their cause. Fortunately, says his father, Steven's recovery, while not total, has been unimpaired by further episodes.

Vickie would not be so lucky.

It was Oct. 19, 1996. Now a sixth-grader at Brighton's St. Columbkille Elementary School, Vickie attended a birthday party at the Museum of Science but came home feeling poorly. The next morning, she tried to sit up. "Dad," she said weakly, "I can't feel my legs."

Back to Children's Hospital, where she was tested again. Brain scans, spinal taps - all were inconclusive. By now, Vickie had lost her power of speech and was dependent on a feeding tube and wheelchair. Steven and Sue Tolman, Vickie's mother, were told she might never walk again

At Franciscan Hospital, Vickie underwent extensive rehabilitation. For the next year, she communicated by eye blinks only or by pointing to letters and pictures on a specially designed board.

On New Year's Eve 1996, she moved back home. Family life adjusted to her caretaking. Her younger sister, Siobha, was naturally the focus of some concern. "Every time she got a fever, we all died," says Steven Tolman, his voice choking.

When Vickie seemed well enough to go back to St. Columbkille, school officials moved her third-floor classroom to a ground-floor library so she could access it more easily. Classmates pitched in to help - Vickie still couldn't hold a pen - with tasks as simple as getting to the bathroom. "I was totally shocked," she says, "at how welcoming 11-year-olds were to a girl like me, in a wheelchair and talking funny."

The Tolmans own a vacation house on Cape Cod. Over the next couple of summers, her father would take Vickie to a nearby beach and carry her into the water, its buoyancy helping her stay upright and allowing her to take baby steps.

"I used to tease her by saying, 'Vic, I'm leaving you in the water today,' " her father says. One day, he recalls, "We're walking back to the van, and she says, 'Let me try it, Dad.' Then she walked around to the other side of the car. That was one of our best days."

Says Vickie, "No way was that going to be my life, being in a wheelchair. No way."

A year later, Vickie walked down the aisle at her eighth-grade graduation.

She continued to make progress, notwithstanding concerns she could suddenly relapse. "Whenever she caught a routine cold, I couldn't tell her right away it wasn't the beginning of another episode," says Dr. Linda Nelson, director of ambulatory pediatrics at Franciscan and Vickie's longtime pediatrician. Specialists continued to puzzle over her case, which has been presented at more than one medical conference, Nelson says.

After graduating from Mount St. Joseph's Academy, an all-girls Catholic high school in Brighton, she took night classes at Boston College, majoring in communication and criminal justice. She earned a degree earlier this year.

A few weeks ago she moved into her own apartment. She enjoys working out at a local gym, drives her own car, and likes to shop - maybe too much, she admits with a peal of laughter.

Since 2001, Vickie has worked at Franciscan Hospital on at least a part-time basis. She currently serves as a teacher's assistant in the preschooler day-care room. "I just love kids," says Vickie, who hopes to get married and have a family of her own someday. Whenever a young child asks why she walks and talks a bit oddly, says Vickie, "I just say I was sick when I was a little girl. They're fine with that."

Her goal in life, she says with a giggle, is "to make lots of money. To be rich someday, I guess."

Her father offers an amendment. "Rich," he says gently, "is determined in your heart."

Joseph P. Kahn can be reached at jkahn@globe.com.