BEVERLY | Eleven years ago, Shelley Cushing went skiing in New Hampshire, and her life has never been the same.

She had a sharp headache as she glided down the slopes, saw flashes of yellow light and collapsed as her left leg went numb. A man asked her if she was OK, and, when she tried to answer, her words were garbled.

"They had me take that dreaded toboggan ride down," she said. An ambulance then took her to the nearest hospital.

A brain scan came up clear, and the hospital told her she had a complicated migraine and sent her home.

Three days later, Cushing had a massive stroke at 22, just months before graduating college. She was paralyzed on the left side of her body, lost a large part of her vision, and doctors said she would never walk again or live a normal life.

"I proved them wrong," she said.

Today, Cushing walks with a brace. She can't move her left arm, but she recovered enough vision so she can drive. She now works as a technician at New England Biolabs in Ipswich.

"It's just your will to survive," she said. "I feel like I was robbed of my 20s, but it seems there's a different life for me.

"If I wasn't so adamant about recovering, and if I didn't have such a great family, I could have wound up in a nursing home for the rest of my life."

Her story is airing on Discovery Health cable network Saturday at 9 and midnight. The hourlong show, called "Brain Attack," uses actors to recreate the events and computer-generated illustrations to explain her rare medical condition. A tear in an artery in her neck caused a blood clot that stopped the flow of oxygen to her brain. Her brain began to swell, putting pressure on her brain stem, which leads to brain damage and ultimately death.

After writing an article for Stroke Connection Magazine two years ago, she received a phone call from Discovery producers in England.

Last January, a television crew showed up at her house and spent about a week interviewing her and her family and filming her doctors and neurologists. The show debuted in November.

"It was like they were following us around with hidden cameras 10 years ago," Cushing said.

As hard as it was to relive the experience, it also opened her eyes to what was going on around her while she was lying in a hospital bed at Massachusetts General Hospital. She saw her family in the waiting room and watched doctors explaining there was a good chance she would die.

"My dad said, 'Do anything you can to save her life,'" she said. "Some of the surgeries were experimental, and they hadn't done them in 60 years. I didn't know that until I saw the documentary."

It definitely wasn't easy. Surgeons cut open her skull and removed the stroke-damaged section of her brain. Days later, an infection made it necessary for surgeons to remove another quarter. Doctors sewed a large piece of her skull into her abdomen to keep the skull section safe, and, for the next 11 months, Cushing had to wear a hockey helmet to protect her exposed brain tissue.

When they sewed her skull back on, it had shrunk and didn't fit properly. Her eye drooped and her face sagged, and it was painful.

"Her head was almost like a soup bowl," said her mother, Frances. "You could put your whole hand in her head." She did what she could to make sure her daughter avoided mirrors, but eventually she got a glimpse of herself.

"When I saw myself, I was so upset," Cushing said. "That was a huge wake-up call."

Later, plastic surgery hid the damage even if it didn't erase the memories. But she still had a fight ahead of her. As a former cheerleading captain and expert roller skater, she was equipped with the necessary drive.

"I like to win, I'll admit it," she said. "Even when it's a competition with myself."

She worked hard to recover -- some of it was out of spite and a desire to prove the doctors wrong.

She was also determined to walk to receive her Clarkson University degree -- a goal she accomplished a year after her stroke -- and she wanted to walk in her friend's wedding.

"You have to find motivation in moments of life," she said. One of the moments has stuck with her -- her love for the Dave Matthews Band.

Three months after the stroke, she was in the hospital and a couple college friends came to visit her.

"They had tickets to my favorite band, and they were going to sneak me out," she said. "A nurse caught wind of the plans and said she would tell the insurance company."

With the plan foiled, she started going downhill. A doctor eventually gave her permission, and, since then, she's been to about 50 Dave Matthews concerts.

Once out of the hospital, a nephew helped her gain control of some of the motor skills affected by the stroke.

"I didn't laugh for months," she said. "I didn't know the difference between happy and sad."

But one day while visiting her sister, who was eight months pregnant, the sister's then 2-year-old son, Ryan, was full of energy, running around the room.

"I just burst out laughing," Cushing said. "There was dead silence in the room. 'Why is that funny?' my mother asked. And I said the last thing she needs is another baby. She needs another baby like a hole in the head."

"My mom told me that's when she knew I would be OK."