Gonyo is a freshman on this year's women's volleyball team, and in the fall of her junior year of high school she went to a haunted house with some friends. When her friends started running toward the entrance, Gonyo started running to catch up and promptly fell straight to the ground.,”Going into that haunted house may have been the best decision of Rabbecka Gonyo's life.

Gonyo is a freshman on this year's women's volleyball team, and in the fall of her junior year of high school she went to a haunted house with some friends. When her friends started running toward the entrance, Gonyo started running to catch up and promptly fell straight to the ground.

Gonyo said she started feeling uncoordinated and her feet were falling asleep regularly prior to going to the haunted house.

After falling a second time on her way out, Gonyo's mother took her to the hospital to find out what was wrong.

"They didn't find anything; they did tests for the bird flu or MS (muscular sclerosis) and they were like, 'Oh I can't find anything,' and then we went to a different hospital the next day and they did tests on me … and they brought in a nerve specialist, and she had seen it before," Gonyo said.

What the nerve specialist saw is called Guillain-Barre Syndrome, a disorder where the immune system attacks part of the peripheral nervous system, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) Web site. The syndrome starts with weakness and tingling sensations in the legs, and if it spreads to the arms and upper body it can be life threatening, which is exactly what happened to Gonyo.

"Overnight I lost all my reflexes," Gonyo said.

As time went by, things got worse for her, and she was moved to the hospital's intensive care unit.

"I couldn't even feed myself; I was laying in bed pretty much paralyzed," Gonyo said. "I missed like a whole month of school, and it took a while to get back to playing sports."

The doctors treated Gonyo's condition with a series of plasma paresis treatments, which Gonyo said cleans the plasma of toxins.

Doctors lauded Gonyo's mother for seeking a second opinion because the condition can become quite serious when left untreated.

"If you don't catch it early enough, yes people die of not feeling heart attacks because their heart goes so fast," Gonyo said.

Gonyo said her heart rate jumped to about 180 or 200 beats per minute before she was moved to the intensive care unit.

Doctors were unable to find what caused the syndrome, but the NINDS's Web site said it can stem from respiratory or gastrointestinal viral infections, or from surgery and vaccinations.

A few weeks before Gonyo noticed the symptoms, she had surgery on her knee.

Gonyo said many people have a difficult time recovering from Guillain-Barre Syndrome, but that because she was young and healthy, a full recovery, and even volleyball, was still possible.

"Everyone was like, 'You're so lucky you're playing sports'," she said. "I was lucky that I was young because most people don't have a full recovery from it and can't walk normally."

Prior to contracting Guillain-Barre, Gonyo only had a verbal commitment to play volleyball at Marquette. But head coach Pati Rolf said it had no effect on ensuing recruitment.

Gonyo is now fully recovered and is a key contributor to this year's volleyball team, averaging 1.57 kills and .86 blocks per game.

"Sometimes when you're struck down by something as significant and serious, to the point where she could have lost her life, I think basically it helped her appreciate things a bit more, and she has great joy in playing," Rolf said.

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