Aashtin’s rocking recovery
AMY Purton never thought she would have to watch her youngest child learn to walk all over again.
Aashtin Artz had always been happy, healthy and outgoing. But in May last year he began feeling sick.
“He’d come home from school saying he was feeling a bit funny. But I thought, ‘it’s just a virus’, and I let it go,” Ms Purton said.
She would later learn her son was “feeling funny” because he had suffered about five mini strokes before experiencing a major stroke that left him vomiting and extremely ill.
Aashtin was rushed to the Geelong hospital by ambulance on May 6 last year. Doctors initially thought he had a brain tumour. He was transported to the Royal Children’s Hospital where further tests revealed he had experienced a right-sided cerebellar ischaemic stroke.
“When I looked at his eyes he couldn’t keep them straight. He couldn’t sit up, he couldn’t walk and his head kept going to one side,” Ms Purton said.
The stroke had damaged Aashtin’s right side and caused fluid build-up and swelling of his brain.
Aashtin underwent surgery where doctors cut into the skull to drain fluid and insert a monitor.
At that point the primary school pupil could not walk, had slurred speech and had one noticeably smaller pupil.
“It was really scary — we didn’t know if he would be in a wheelchair forever. Doctors can’t really tell you,” Ms Purton said. “It was really heartbreaking.”
Aashtin was in hospital for six weeks. He slowly showed signs of improvement and was able to smile and sit up.
Aashtin had to learn to sit, walk and stand up again. Ms Purton recorded his progress on video and said he was “so wobbly” in the early days.
When he was discharged from hospital Aashtin started daily rehabilitation with Geelong’s Victorian Paediatric Rehabilitation Service, dedicated to young people in the Barwon South West Region.
“He would do hydrotherapy and physiotherapy. Having the facility here meant we didn’t have to travel ... which made it so much easier for Aashtin to focus,” Ms Purton said.
A year on from the stroke, Aashtin is now school vicecaptain, is able to run and loves playing the drums.
This year he will run two kilometres in the school cross country and hopes to raise money which he will donate to the Barwon Foundation’s Bricks4Kids campaign to raise money to build a specialised rehab centre for children. Each brick will help the foundation to raise the $3.6 million needed to build the centre.