BY SHERI McWHIRTER
smcwhirter@record-eagle.com
KALKASKA —
Wyatt Miller sat on the floor in the basement at Kalkaska Memorial Health Center and used plastic bingo chips to develop his fine motor skills.
"Use your right hand," said Traci Hart, his certified occupational therapist assistant.
Wyatt took one chip and used it to flip others across a table, a relatively easy task for most 12-year-olds. But Wyatt is different from most children his age. Doctors diagnosed Wyatt with an arteriovenous malformation, or AVM, that led to a stroke as he slept.
The March episode forced Wyatt to spend weeks in the hospital before he briefly returned home to Kalkaska. In May, surgeons removed the AVM from his brain, and he spent the summer in speech, physical and occupational therapy sessions, as well as tutoring to catch up with lessons he missed while hospitalized.
"I really didn't have a summer break with therapy and tutoring," Wyatt said. "There's always next summer."
Wyatt's ordeal left his right side weaker than his left, particularly his right hand. Now he must re-train his muscles to perform ordinary tasks, a real challenge since his left hand is far easier to use.
"He keeps on using his left, so I grab his left hand so he can't use it," said Avery, Wyatt's 8-year-old brother.
Wyatt's therapists use the same tricks; they make him tuck his left hand in his back jeans pocket and use his right hand to bounce a balloon and keep it from falling to the ground. Same thing with stacking cups and playing cards: He has to use the hand that needs the most exercise.
"You have to use your right hand or we have to start over, OK?" Hart said.
Hart noted improvement in Wyatt's right arm strength and said each monthly assessment shows he can grip more weight.
Amy Miller, Wyatt's mother, sat in a nearby waiting room and recounted her family's trials throughout Wyatt's illness and recovery. His May 12 surgery at Helen DeVos Children's Hospital was nerve-racking, she said.
"It was really, really long, about twice as long as they told us. It was 14 or 15 hours under anesthesia and 11 or 12 hours in surgery," Miller said. "We had a lot of family support there. They called into the waiting room every two hours with an update."
Doctors thought they'd removed the deformed veins and arteries in Wyatt's brain, but an angiogram showed they missed some. That's why the delicate brain surgery continued well into the evening.
"They needed to get every last cell, or it would regrow," Miller said.
Today Wyatt is trying to get back to normal. He swims at the Kaliseum pool. He plays computer games. And he's going back to school on Tuesday.
"Now I have to do seventh-grade homework," Wyatt sighed.
"I'm curious about how the back-to-school thing will go," Miller said. "Endurance-wise he's good, but I'm curious to see how he handles having to think all day long, to focus on school."
Wyatt will be allowed to use a laptop computer to take notes at Woodland School, a charter school on Supply Road in Whitewater Township. And he's going to play the baritone horn in band instead of the trumpet because the instrument will sit in his lap, unlike the trumpet he'd have to hold upright.
Wyatt's doctors also signed off on a recent MRI that showed no AVM regrowth, so he's clear for a year before another check-up.
Wyatt said he believes he's going to emerge stronger for his struggles.
"It's been quite amazing because God made it happen. The stroke, the surgery, everything. He's got a plan for me and I don't know what it is, but I'm going to find out," he said.
