For Jani Tyler, the road to the figure skating events at the 2001 Special Olympics World Winter Games Alaska was marked with broken sleep and hospital rooms.

Three times a week, Tyler, 23, of San Diego, was in bed at 7 p.m. and up again at 11 p.m. At midnight, after the last hockey games had ended at a local indoor rink, she would practice her solo and pairs figure skating routines for three hours.

Then it was home for more sleep, a wake-up call at 6 a.m., and work at a preschool at 8 a.m.

And that was the easy part.

The night before she left California, Tyler needed a platelet transfusion to treat a blood disorder that stops her blood from clotting.

For Jani Tyler and her family, life-threatening experiences have been the norm since she was a toddler.

"I always thought, 'Why me? Why me?' " said Jani Tyler's mother, Marianne. "But then I think, 'What would our lives be without her?' "

Just after learning to walk, Jani Tyler was diagnosed with Lennox syndrome, a rare seizure disorder that causes mental retardation.

Her parents noticed nothing wrong with their second child until she was 13 months old. She was walking unsteadily one day when her arms stiffened and she fell to the floor.

"Like she tripped," said her father, Robert.

What followed was as many as 500 to 600 seizures a day until doctors diagnosed the condition and found a medicine that could control it.

"She died on us three times before she was 2 years old," said Marianne Tyler of the close calls.

"Until she was about 8, it was touch and go," she said.

Jani still takes a variety of medicine, Marianne Tyler said. The seizures mostly are absent. But life-threatening situations still arise, such as last April, when she had a 106-degree fever.

"She does weird things to us every spring," her mother said.

Lennox syndrome left Tyler without the ability to read, write or tell time. Given a list of things to do, she'll pick out one and forget the others, her mother said.

But figure skating gives her direction.

"She's the one who says, 'Mom, we've got to go skating tonight' and she loves it," Tyler said. "She keeps on going like the Energizer Bunny."

Skating in the Level IV Ladies Division on Saturday, Jani Tyler finished fourth.

"It makes me feel good," she said.

Besides skating, Tyler is a "global messenger" for the Special Olympics, speaking on behalf of the organization to other groups.

Her mother said Jani is aware that she has mental retardation. She tells that to the groups she speaks to, and says there's nothing wrong with that.

"She says, 'That's OK, because I can do what I can do.' "