In February 2013, the LSU women’s basketball team began warming up for a game against Mississippi State. As the pregame drills started, then-sophomore forward Sheila Boykin noticed her legs were not working correctly and felt numbness as she continued to practice.
Boykin had never considered herself a player who lets people know when something is wrong. But the mysterious feeling in her legs lingered throughout the first half, and she was forced to tell coach Nikki Caldwell she couldn’t continue with the game.
Boykin first diagnosed herself with a knee injury, something she suffered with while in high school. But this was a different sensation. This was something that could affect not only her career, but the rest of her life.
“I was thinking, ‘OK so I’ll be back by next week?’ That’s the first thing I asked [trainer] Micki [Collins],” Boykin said. “And she was like, ‘No baby, you’re going to be done for the rest of the season.’”
Boykin was diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome, a disorder that affects the peripheral nervous system. 
After the diagnosis, Boykin was put in the hospital for five days as doctors kept the syndrome from spreading further into her body. With the team in Missouri and her family still driving to Baton Rouge from their home in Los Angeles, Collins expected Boykin to break down at some point.
But as Collins was starting to learn, Boykin is a different animal.
“I remember thinking ‘Just prepare yourself, she’s going to break down here, she’s going to break down,’ She never did,” Collins said. “She asked me lots of questions — a lot of questions. She never cried and she never even looked like she was scared.”
Leaving the hospital, Boykin had to learn how to live a normal life with the symptoms the syndrome brought. She couldn’t walk straight. She couldn’t jump. Most importantly, she couldn’t play basketball — for now. But she still had to go to school, and she had to start training to be ready for the next season.
Collins and Jon Silver, director of Basketball Operations, worked out a buddy system to help Boykin get to and from class. Employees at the Cox Communications Academic Center, meanwhile, helped arrange tutors to go to Boykin’s dorm.
Collins began to put Boykin through training exercises that would gradually bring back her muscle tone. Some of the drills Collins had to make up on her own, but they still helped Boykin regain strength.
There was one constant in Collins’s plan: she needed to lay eyes on Boykin every day. Collins said she knew Boykin would have good and bad days.
“I’d throw out 10 foam balls or 10 straws, and she’d have to pick up 10 before she could leave that day,” Collins said. “Some days that might take her 15 minutes, the next day it might take her two hours.”
After spring break, training became less difficult, and Boykin began to show signs of recovery. The numbness left her legs, but she still walked with a distinct limp, and other symptoms were still present. As the summer dragged on, a date for full recovery was still up in the air. There were fears that Boykin would not play in the 2013-14 season at all.
Boykin said her biggest motivation came from her mother, who advised her that there are worse things happening in the world and to remain positive throughout the ordeal.
Then, right before the team went on a trip to Spain in August, something in the practice facility caught Collins’s eye.
“I saw [Boykin] walking down the hall and I was like, ‘Sheila, you don’t look like you’re limping anymore.’ And she said, ‘What?’” Collins said. “She had become so accustomed to limping, she didn’t even realize she wasn’t limping.”
Collins decided to put Boykin on the court for practice that day, and although she didn’t do much, the final stage of recovery had arrived. Boykin became acquainted again with the team she left in February.
On Nov. 10 against St. Joseph’s, Boykin made her first start since her recovery. She has gone on to start in nine other games this season, including a game against Hampton University, in which she notched a career-high seven rebounds.
Looking back, both Collins and Boykin feel grateful for the bond they made during the entire process. Collins said although most days as a trainer are filled with mundane tasks, the time spent with Boykin helped reaffirm why she choose her career.
Although Boykin is now fully healthy, she still fears the Guillain-Barré may come back. In those times, however, she remembers the wise words of her mother.
“She always told me, ‘There is a light at the end of the tunnel for you. You’re going to get through this’” Boykin said. “That’s something my mom told me every single day. I didn’t believe it until I started telling myself that.”