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Tiara sustained traumatic brain injuries in a car accident eight miles south of Leesburg, Va. in March 2007that killed her best friend and left her in a debilitated state, confined to her bed. Despite what doctors have called slim chances for recovery, her mother has no doubt she will find some way to play again. Tiara is no newcomer to overcoming the odds, but since she returned home from the hospital in February the Teasleys are looking for aid from a home makeover show to make their home wheelchair accessible so Tiara can triumph this time.

In 2006, the Bowie native was in her senior year at Notre Dame Academy in Middleburg, Va., playing for the girl’s varsity basketball team that was ranked No. 1 by The Washington Post and No. 6 in USA Today’s national poll. She hoped to attend New York University to major in physical therapy.

One day that October, complaining of a headache, Tiara Teasley took an over-the-counter pain medication and had a severe allergic reaction. She developed a 106-degree fever and severe blisters all over her body. The reaction turned out to be a rare and potentially fatal disease called Stevens-Johnsons Syndrome and Tiara had the most severe form. Sixty percent of her skin sloughed off and Tiara spent two months in a medically induced coma, but she returned to school in January 2007 determined to graduate in May.

She was halfway to graduation when the accident occurred March 16. Tiara got a ride with friends after school was dismissed early because of a snowstorm. The car skidded into oncoming traffic on an icy road and the collision with an oncoming truck instantly killed her friend Emma DiVito, 17.

After the accident Tina Teasley said the school community was incredibly supportive.

‘‘They held fundraisers so we could take a leave of absence from work and still pay our bills,” Tina Teasley said of herself and her husband Tony.

Now a year after the accident the Teasleys have found their home to be an obstacle in Tiara’s recovery. Neither their two-level home nor their van is wheelchair accessible, leaving Tiara confined to the upstairs unless a family member carries her. The narrow hallways also make it difficult to maneuver the wheelchair, and scrapes mark the doorways and halls where Tina and Tony have tried.

The family would like to install a wheelchair lift in their home and on their van but they have exhausted their funds. The Teasleys said they have tried unsuccessfully to get funding from state organizations, so as a last ditch effort they have recently applied to the Extreme Home Makeover TV show.

‘‘I always watched the TV show with my daughter, who passed away,” said Emma DiVito’s mother Linda DiVito, who encouraged the Teasleys to apply for the show. ‘‘They have given everything up for their daughter... Every time they struggle to get her in and out of the house and their van she gets thrown around like a sack of potatoes.”

‘‘My wife and I have applied to almost everything that is available,” said Tony Teasley. ‘‘We are on waiting lists and being told that there are no funds. In the short term we don’t know what else to do as far as how to make modifications. We just hope we don’t have an emergency in the house like it catching on fire... It takes so long to move her.”

In the meantime, the family is focused on the therapy Tiara began receiving Monday at Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore. Tina Teasley said it will begin to get her daughter back into a normal routine.

‘‘She hasn’t walked since the accident and she really wants to get up,” Tina Teasley said. ‘‘She hasn’t given up, so why should we?”

E-mail Andrea Noble at anoble@gazette.net.