Jamie Coyle poses in her hospital bed with St. Raphael hockey player Andrew Bettencourt, whom she has looked up to since she was a little girl.

Special to the journal / jim hopgood

Jamie Coyle doesn’t just love hockey. She lives and breathes it.

She was 3 years old when her mother bought her her first pair of skates — hockey skates, not figure skates, the toddler insisted.

She’s been hooked ever since.

Her father, Jim Coyle, taught her the sport on the family’s backyard rink and she honed her skills in youth hockey leagues. Jamie, now 12, has been playing for the R.I. Selects/R.I. Titans Under-14 girls ice hockey team and was eagerly looking forward to playing for St. Mary Academy-Bay View’s middle school team this winter.

She dreams of one day playing in the Olympics.

Her dream has taken on a new meaning as she recovers from a stroke she suffered on the ice three weeks ago. Although she has not yet fully regained her speech, Jamie has no problem finding the words when asked if she will play hockey again.

“I know I will,” says Jamie, without hesitation, from her hospital bed at the UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, where she has been since collapsing during a hockey game on Aug. 9.

“I’m still just waiting to wake up from this whole nightmare,” says Sharon Coyle, who hasn’t left her daughter’s side and vows not to walk through the front door of their Cumberland house until Jamie is ready to walk through it with her. “This is the scariest thing I’ve ever been through in my life. I still just feel numb. I just pray and pray and pray and say, ‘God help me. Help her. Help us get through this.’  ”

What makes this all the more baffling, Sharon Coyle says, is that Jamie has always been “the picture of health,” suffering maybe one ear infection in her entire life.

Indeed, Jamie Coyle appeared perfectly normal on the morning of her collapse, her coaches say. Playing with the R.I. Titans in a hockey tournament at the New England Sports Center in Marlboro, Mass., she participated in the pregame warm-up of jogging and calisthenics.

Thanks in part to Jamie, the team had gotten off to a good start in its first game of the day. Skating at center ice, Jamie remembers taking off on a breakaway and firing a puck into the top of the net to give the Titans a 2-0 lead over their Vermont opponent.

Jamie was on the bench for about four minutes when coaches Henry Sherman and Jim Hopgood summoned her to go back into the game. Jamie attempted to take the ice, but fell.

At first her coaches thought she had tripped over someone’s stick or was just kidding around. They quickly realized that something was very wrong. Jamie had lost the use of the right side of her body and she could not respond.

“Without a doubt, that was one of the worst days of my life,” says Sherman. “I’ve been coaching for nearly 28 years and I’ve never seen anything like it. We tried talking to her and it was like she was looking right through us.”

“I remember being on the bench and having a really bad headache and not being able to talk,” says Jamie, who never lost consciousness during the ordeal and recalls everything. “I turned to go onto the ice and the next thing I knew, I was falling down on the bench. I remember everyone trying to talk to me. I was frustrated because I couldn’t talk to them. I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know what.”

Titans coach Charlie Stimpson, an emergency medical technician in the Cumberland Fire Department, examined Jamie after she was placed on the team bench. Recognizing the signs of stroke, he signaled for someone to call 911.

She was taken by rescue to the UMass medical center, where doctors confirmed that she had, indeed, suffered a stroke. They also discovered that Jamie has patent foramen ovale (PFO), a congenital heart defect found in about 20 percent of all Americans –– including New England Patriots linebacker Tedy Bruschi, who suffered a stroke in February 2005 that nearly ended his NFL career.

According to the National Stroke Association Web site, PFO refers to an opening, or hole, in the muscular wall between the upper left and right chambers of the heart. While everyone has this opening while developing in the womb, the hole usually closes up at birth. For some it does not close, however, and although many with a PFO go through life without any symptoms, it is possible for a blood clot to leak between the chambers, travel into the bloodstream and then clog arteries to the brain, causing a stroke.

While the PFO could have caused Jamie’s stroke, doctors also discovered that her blood vessels are in a weakened state, says Sharon Coyle. Jamie continues to undergo tests as her doctors try to determine the best treatment.

“There are so many specialists and doctors looking at her because this is so rare,” says Sharon Coyle. “I mean, this just doesn’t happen to a healthy 12-year-old. So they still don’t have the answers. They tell us that sometimes they never find out. We’re just sitting, watching and waiting.”

Within the first week after the stroke, Jamie regained mobility in most of her right side. But last week, she was moved back into intensive care and restricted to bed rest as doctors continue extensive testing.

“She’s showing a lot of signs of improvement,” Sharon Coyle said last week. “Her right arm won’t move at all, but her right leg is moving so much better. Her smile is all the way back and she can talk up a storm now. She’s eating really well. But she’s still in the woods.

“The brain gets worse before it gets better is what the doctors are telling me. She is having no physical therapy yet because they don’t want her blood pressure to go up at all. They’re pumping her full of steroids to try to reduce the swelling. We’re just praying all it’s going to take is [medication]. I have to put all my trust in these people. They’ve been so incredible to me.”

When she is well enough, Jamie will move to the Spaulding Rehabilitation Center in Boston.

Jamie, who would have started the eighth grade at Bay View this week, is beginning to get back her spunk, her mother says. She insists, for example, that any male who comes into her room must paint his toenails bright red to match hers. (She has gotten most everyone to oblige, including her coaches and one of her doctors.) Her mother says Jamie loves getting massages from the nurses but doesn’t want to let them near her when it’s time for her daily shot. She’s getting frustrated, wanting to get out of bed and move, says Sharon Coyle, who is trying hard to keep up Jamie’s spirits.

The constant stream of visitors — including daily visits from Jamie’s coaches and their families and visits from her older brothers, Ryan and Kyle — has been wonderful, says her mother. Sharon Coyle believes that support has been a key to Jamie’s progress.

“It helps me a lot that my friends and family come around to make me happy,” says Jamie, who was particularly thrilled by a visit from St. Raphael hockey player Andrew Bettencourt, whom she has looked up to since she was young. Reading the greetings and prayers being posted on the “Fight for 7” Web site named for her hockey number — www.fightfor7.com — is also uplifting, says Jamie.

One of the posts on the message board comes from former Boston University hockey player Travis Roy, who became paralyzed in 1995 after crashing head-first into the boards during a game.

“One thing I’ve learned since my accident … is there are times when we choose our challenges, and other times when the challenges simply choose us,” Roy wrote. “It is what we do in the face of those challenges that will define who we are, and more importantly, who we can and will become. Being a hockey player, I’m sure you’re as tough as they come. Keep fighting.”

cthorn@projo.com