Updated: April 16, 2008, 3:58 PM ET

Commodores' Smith values everything after complete recovery

By Chris Low
ESPN.com

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- George Smith keeps the pictures on his cell phone.

His father took them four years ago when the Vanderbilt sixth-year senior receiver lay comatose and paralyzed in the intensive care unit of a Pembroke Pines, Fla., hospital.

Even now, when Smith clicks over to the pictures and surveys all the different tubes hooked up to him from the ventilator that was keeping him alive, he gets a lump in his throat.

Those sobering images are also a reminder of sorts -- as if he really needed a reminder -- that there's a reason he made it back from an affliction that leaves most people disabled, paralyzed or even worse … dead.

Transverse myelitis, a rare neurological disorder that causes swelling in the spinal cord and leads to the shutdown of bodily functions, took Smith to death's doorstep in the spring of 2004.

His fight, will to survive and insatiable desire to fulfill his dreams have taken him to the role of captain on the Commodores' 2008 football team.

"I don't need too much motivation, but that always gets me back to reality whenever I look at those pictures," said Smith, Vanderbilt's active leader in career receptions (76) and receiving yards (997). "You value every breath, every day. You value every person you meet. You value every challenge you confront. God has a plan and a purpose for me making it back.

"I'm not just talking about football, either. I'm talking about life."

Vanderbilt coach Bobby Johnson couldn't have been happier when the players voted Smith as one of the three team captains earlier this spring. Following the Commodores' spring game, Johnson took Smith aside, flashed a warm smile and said simply, "How you doing, captain?"

Almost instantly, Smith flashed back to four years ago when merely wiggling his toes seemed insurmountable. He spent five weeks in ICU, drifting in and out of consciousness and wondering if he'd ever see his 20th birthday.

Johnson was in that hospital room along with Vanderbilt receivers coach Charlie Fisher soon after Smith was admitted. Only a week earlier, he'd been practicing football with the rest of the Commodores' team as they wrapped up the portion of spring practice right before spring break.

Smith had been experiencing some tingling in his arms and legs and also had some intense neck pain one night. He woke up the next morning, and his hands were numb. The first thought among Vanderbilt's training staff was that he might have a stinger.

But by the time Smith got home for spring break, he was gradually losing more feeling. Within a day or two, his whole left side had gone numb.

His mother, Kathleen Sorrell, had seen enough. She took him to the hospital, which would become Smith's home for the next two months.

"It scared me to death, to see how fast a guy like that could go down," Johnson recalled. "Seven days earlier, he was practicing football at a high level and looked great. Now, he's lying there in ICU and barely hanging on."

One of the last things Smith remembers before sinking into a coma is his mother helping him sip some water from his hospital bed.

"I choked on it, and the next think I know is that I'm waking up two days later in the ICU with tubes in my throat and neck," Smith said. "Let me tell you, I was terrified. You're sitting there, and the only thing you can do is hear and listen and look.

"I remember one guy across the way. I can still see him. He passed away one night. It was around four o'clock, I heard that alarm, and nurses came from everywhere. You talk about scary.

"In a matter of a week, my whole life had changed."

Because transverse myelitis is so rare, it took the doctors at Memorial West Hospital nearly a week to diagnose it as Smith's problem, according to his mother. All the while, she stayed on the phone at Smith's bedside talking to different doctors from all over the country and frantically searching for answers.

She knew time wasn't on their side.

"It was the first case of it they'd ever had there at that hospital," said Sorrell, a ninth-grade algebra teacher. "All he could do was make his eyes move. Believe it or not, there were a few laughable moments that would help. We'd point out letters to help him talk to us. He would get frustrated with me and roll his eyes up in his head, which was his way of laughing.

"Even in a time like that, he kept his sense of humor."

Ultimately, the treatment doctors settled on for Smith was called plasmapheresis, a transfusion-like procedure that essentially cleanses the blood.

Smith still refers to it as the "magic juice."

Told that it was a treatment only rarely used in the United States, Sorrell was willing to try just about anything. The process called for his blood to be filtered every two or three days. After the first treatment, the nurse was preparing the machine for the second treatment when Smith slowly moved one of his fingers.

"The nurse and I both almost lost consciousness," Sorrell said. "Everything was shutting down, his kidneys and everything. We were getting down to the end, but we knew then that there was hope."

Sure enough, two days later, Smith was able to lift his hand.

"And the next thing you know, he was sitting up in bed," Sorrell said.

Smith lost about 35 pounds through the whole ordeal, dropping from 195 to 160. He was pale and weak and had to teach himself through therapy to do the simplest of chores again.

"I remember trying to stand up again for the first time. It's the hardest thing I've ever had to do. It was all hard, though, even chewing," said Smith, still wincing four years later.

But playing football again?