KALKASKA -- Wyatt Miller turned 12 in the hospital.
His ordeal started with what his father thought was a nightmare. It turned out he was right.
Doctors recently diagnosed Wyatt with an arteriovenous malformation, or AVM, that led to a stroke as the boy slept at his family's Kalkaska County home on March 8. Dwayne "Buck" Miller, his father, heard Wyatt whining in his sleep and checked on the unresponsive child.
"I tried to wake him and he wouldn't. Then I sat him up and he vomited, but he didn't respond to me. He'd already had the stroke," Miller said.
Emergency responders rushed Wyatt to Munson Medical Center in Traverse City where a CT scan showed a major bleed on his brain. Next came an emergency flight to Helen DeVos Children's Hospital in Grand Rapids.
"Initially he couldn't walk, he couldn't talk, he couldn't use his right leg and his face was numb," Miller said.
Nearly five weeks later, after countless tests, physicals and therapy sessions, doctors discharged Wyatt from the hospital. Family friends are organizing a benefit dinner on Saturday in Kalkaska to help with medical expenses.
"Wyatt is doing pretty good today. We've got some nervous excitement about coming home. He's excited and he's nervous," said Amy Miller, his mother, on Friday. "They tell us a brain injury can take 12 to 18 months and to be patient."
"It's going to be a long road," Dwayne Miller said.
Now Wyatt begins three-times-a-week therapy sessions in Traverse City in an expected long recovery.
First is a doctor's visit on Tuesday, when the Millers learn whether Wyatt's AVM is operable. Either he'll have brain surgery, or have to live with his condition the rest of his life.
Wyatt is a sixth-grader and a top mathematics student at Woodland School, a charter school on Supply Road in Whitewater Township. He swims for Kalkaska's private swim club. He plays the trumpet and loves computers.
Dwayne Miller said his son's medical condition and its sudden appearance -- Wyatt's AVM likely is a birth defect -- changed his perspective on parenting. Doing chores, finishing paperwork and other details no longer seem good reasons to put off spending time with his children, both Wyatt and his 7-year-old brother Avery.
"Your everyday life seems less important, the things you have to do," Dwayne Miller said as tears welled in his eyes.
Amy Miller took a leave of absence from her job at a real estate company in Kalkaska to stay with Wyatt in Grand Rapids. So Dwayne Miller's job as a salesman for Standard Electric Co. is their only income to cover the family's everyday expenses and Wyatt's medical bills.
The family has medical insurance, but has yet to see what their portion of the bills will be, Dwayne Miller said.
That's why some family friends organized a benefit dinner for Wyatt and his family.
"I've known them for a while. Both the boys have fished in my pond," said Mike Major, of Williamsburg. "I know they'd do it for me if I were in the same spot."
Major and his girlfriend Kate Judd planned the event, including food, raffles and a silent auction.
The benefit dinner will be April 17 from 5 to 8 p.m. at the Kalkaska County Commission on Aging, 303 S. Coral St. in Kalkaska. Major can provide more information at 499-4424.
