If you go What: Noodles & Company fundraiser for the Get Better Riley fund When: Today from 10:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. at the Hover Street restaurant and from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. at the north Main Street restaurant. Where: Noodles & Company’s two Longmont locations: 1087 S. Hover St. and 2255 Main St. More info: 50 percent of proceeds from sales at both Longmont restaurants will go to the Get Better Riley Fund. Additional donations can also be sent to the St. Vrain Valley Credit Union, 777 21st Ave., Longmont, CO 80501

LONGMONT — Riley Ljungdahl hasn’t let everything she’s been through in the past four months affect her attitude.

“When I got in a wheelchair, it definitely felt different, like I wasn’t normal,” said the 11-year-old Longmont girl. “And in the hospital, I kept asking myself why did this happen to me? Why can’t I be just a normal kid and go to school? And I finally realized that I know I’m in a wheelchair but I can do many powerful things.”

Riley has been diagnosed with a rare neurological disorder called transverse myelitis, which is caused by inflammation of the spinal cord. The inflammation prevents the nerves in the spine from communicating with the rest of the body, and, in Riley’s case, has led to paralysis from her sternum through her feet.

Riley, a fifth-grader at St. John the Baptist Catholic School in Longmont, said her faith has helped her realize that “things happen to people for certain reasons and sometimes it happens, but you just have to get over it and do the best that you can with it.”

Today, the two Noodles & Company restaurants in Longmont will donate 50 percent of their sales to the Get Better Riley Fund.

About $12,000 already has been donated to the fund, which will help Riley’s family with medical bills, therapy, adapting their home for Riley’s wheelchair and future expenses. A pie auction at St. John’s before Thanksgiving raised more than $4,000, and the student council collected about $500 from selling Christmas T-shirts and soda and no-uniform days. One family from the school donated materials to build a ramp from the sidewalk to Riley’s home. Another paid for a handicap-accessible shower to be installed at the house.

Riley’s mother, Karen Ljungdahl, said both she and her daughter are grateful for support from the community at St. John the Baptist Catholic School.

“It’s shown me how strong both myself and my daughter are and I think also showed me really how much true love and support you have. You never find out how much people care until you go through something,” Karen said.

The diagnosis

During softball practice after school on Oct. 6, Riley started feeling a twinge in her right shoulder blade that quickly turned into a shooting pain in her back. It was so severe she could barely walk to the car when her mother’s boyfriend picked her up.

Karen left class at Regis University, where she’s working on a nursing degree, and rushed home to Longmont. At first Karen, a nursing intern on the medical and surgical floor of University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora, thought the pain was a pinched nerve, but when it didn’t subside, she took Riley to Longmont United Hospital’s emergency room. Riley later was taken by ambulance to The Children’s Hospital in Aurora, and an MRI revealed transverse myelitis.

“I just couldn’t believe that when I left for school and Riley walking and on her way to softball practice,” Karen said, “and by the time I got back, she was completely paralyzed.”

Karen said Riley’s doctors suspect the transverse myelitis was an adverse reaction to a flu shot and a booster for the Tdap — tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis — vaccine that Riley received a few weeks after taking antibiotics both for a bacterial stomach infection and for strep throat.

About 1,400 new cases of transverse myelitis are diagnosed each year in the United States, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. About 33,000 Americans have a disability because of the disorder.

Riley spent two months in the hospital as doctors tried several treatments to reverse the paralysis. None had an immediate effect, and Riley returned home Dec. 2 in a wheelchair.

The response

News about Riley shocked the tight-knit community at St. John’s, said parent Teresa MacPhail, whose two children attend the school.

“When this happened, I think what alarmed me and what pulled everyone together so quickly was the fact that we all vaccinate our kids. All our kids have had strep, and this could have been my kid,” she said.

While in the hospital, Riley hosted a sleepover with her best friends. For Halloween, classmates decorated her hospital room with ghosts, spider webs and lights. Members of the school’s Girl Scout troop visited Riley to help her catch up on homework. A group of boys brought video games and Nerf guns one day. The wheelchair races down the second floor ramp have become legendary.

“We all just wanted to help,” said fifth-grader Marcel MacPhail, 11, a close friend of Riley’s since first grade. “I think the whole fifth grade became a family because of this.”

Riley returned to St. John’s in January. Between classes, students help her on the elevator and girls take turns helping her in the restroom.

Her homeroom teacher, Mary Wellems, said concern for Riley has had a unifying effect on the students, especially on the fifth-graders.

“Whether they realize it or not, it does give them perspective on that life isn’t fair,” Wellems said.

In spite of what she’s been through, Marcel said Riley is still the same person.

“She doesn’t like to have to call on people. She likes to be independent and she is independent. Just because she’s in a wheelchair doesn’t mean she can’t do stuff on her own,” he said.

The future

Doctors have told Riley there is a 30 percent chance she will walk again, but it could take three to 10 years of intense physical therapy.

“We have told her we’re going to keep at this as if you are part of that 30 percent and someday we’re going to see something and whatever that is we’re going to deal with it,” said her mom.

Riley has been named one of five patient ambassadors at The Children’s Hospital for 2012. She will act as a representative of the hospital and will visit other sick children.

Riley has expressed an interested in paraplegic sports, such as basketball and skiing.

“As a mom, I just tell her, ‘You know what, Riley? Things happen for a reason. You don’t know why. I can only believe that something positive is going to come out of this, and some way, somehow at the end of the day, we’re going to realize why this happened, and it’s going to be OK, and there’s no reason why you can’t have a normal life,'” Karen said.

Magdalena Wegrzyn can be reached at 303-684-5274 or mwegrzyn@times-call.com.