Jamie Schanbaum, who lost limbs to meningococcal septicemia, learns to ride bicycle

Sean Ahmadi holds the front tire of a red bicycle steady between his knees.

"Hop on," he tells Jamie Schanbaum.

The 22-year-old college student swings a leg over the bike, sliding first one, then the other prosthetic foot into plastic cages that hold her feet on the pedals. As the tires start rolling, Ahmadi runs alongside her, like a parent balancing a child just learning to ride. Then he dashes back to his own bike, jumps aboard and races after her.

Schanbaum used to ride her bike everywhere. Then, in November 2008, when she was a sophomore at the University of Texas, she caught meningococcal septicemia, a life-threatening blood infection caused by the same bacterium that causes meningitis, an inflammation of the protective covering of the brain and spinal cord. It can be spread through sneezing and coughing.

She spent six months in the hospital. Ultimately, her fingers and lower legs were amputated.

Suddenly, she couldn't get out of bed or walk, much less ride a bike.

Far more serious than the flu

Schanbaum had gone to a friend's house to do laundry on a dreary Wednesday night. She didn't feel well when she got there, so she curled up on the couch for a nap.

As the hours ticked away, she felt worse. She stayed the night, but began vomiting repeatedly. Her skin grew so sensitive she put towels on the tile floor to cushion her feet. She couldn't shake the chills.

Still, she didn't think it was anything more than the flu. She drove home the next morning and buried herself under blankets.

"I still didn't think it was serious," she says. "I had important tests coming up, and a Ghostland Observatory concert to go to."

She crawled into bed and ignored the ringing phone. A few hours later, her sister, concerned something was wrong, came to Jamie's apartment. She realized Schanbaum was seriously ill and drove her to Seton Medical Center Austin.

By that time, Schanbaum couldn't walk. Her body was shutting down and blood was no longer flowing to her extremities.

She had meningococcal septicemia.

Nurses administered antibiotics and started dialysis. Her mother, who had just moved to McAllen, drove back to Austin.

In the following weeks, Schanbaum lay in a hospital bed as her hands and feet, then her arms and legs, changed color. "I literally watched my limbs go from red to purple to black to dying off," she says.

She underwent dozens of skin graft surgeries and 50 days of oxygen therapy in hopes of salvaging her suffocating extremities.

"(Meningococcal septicemia is) like a hurricane," says Patsy Schanbaum, Jamie's mother. "It comes and does all this damage, and we're left to clean it up."

Finally, doctors at St. Joseph's Hospital in Houston, where Jamie had been transferred, decided they had to amputate the fingers on both her hands and her legs below the knees. "When they did tell us, I cried," Schanbaum says.

After the surgery, she woke up in excruciating pain. "I literally could not move. I didn't lift my arms over my head until January. I didn't sit up in bed until March," she says.

The normally outgoing, laid-back college student fell into a depression. Then she grew angry.

"It breaks my heart every day," Patsy Schanbaum says. "As a mother, you want to protect her."

‘Amazingly brave'

After six months in the hospital, Jamie Schanbaum finally went home. But that meant new challenges. She had to face the stares and questions of friends and the public.

At first she used a wheelchair. Eventually she was fitted with prosthetic legs. She started to learn to walk again in August 2009.

During a visit with her prosthetician earlier this year, Schanbaum learned about two Austin men with prosthetic legs who had learned to cycle. Her prosthetician put her in touch with those cyclists, and connected her with Bicycle Sport Shop, which donated a bicycle. She also met multisport coach Sean Ahmadi, who has worked with physically challenged cyclists and rowers for several years.

But she couldn't just hop on a bike and start pedaling. "I was really unsure what I could do without seeing her," Ahmadi says.