STROBEL: Variety Village a refuge in recovery for Mavi

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On her family’s longest day, Dalia Valle found her kid brother Maverick slumped in snow in their east end schoolyard.

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He was sobbing.

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“Mavi,” Dalia said, “what’s wrong?”

“My head really hurts,” he replied.

She helped him to the office, which called their mom, Janna. It was last Jan. 27.

When Janna got there, Maverick was beet red and vomiting, his speech garbled. He kept mumbling, “I need to go to sleep now.”

In Scarborough General’s emergency ward, at the age of 6, “Mavi pretty much died in my arms,” says Janna. Her son’s eyes glazed over. They rolled back in his head. He went limp.

“I started to scream and they scooped him up and took him to a room. Thirty people, it seemed like, all rushed in.”

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The PA speakers called out “Code Pink.” It’s the worst code. It means a kid’s in cardiac arrest. There was a lot of yelling and tubes and chest compressions. A hospital clergyman showed up.

“I did not want to see him, or talk to him,” Janna tells me.

The gravity struck home when Mavi’s dad, Mario, began to cry.

They took Maverick on an ambulance run downtown to Sick Kids hospital. Toronto Police cruisers stopped Friday rush-hour traffic.

It wasn’t Mavi’s heart. It was his brain. A blood vessel in his cerebellum had ruptured in two places. It was a classic “ticking time bomb,” a malformed vein waiting to explode.

A Sick Kids surgeon removed a fist-sized piece of Mavi’s skull, went in and staunched the bleeding, then installed a drain … and so began the long road back for Maverick Valle.

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Before, he had been “the chillest, happiest little dude,” says Janna. He took dance lessons, drew reams of pictures, always calm and cool.

Now, he lay with no light in his dusky eyes, drooling, zero recognition, spasmodically kicking a leg. It’s what nurses call “storming.” It’s a parent’s horror show.

“His shell was there,” says Janna, “but I thought the Mavi inside was gone.”

Well, he’s back. By Valentine’s Day, the kid had emerged from his coma and was offering small smiles. He left Sick Kids in April after his seventh birthday, and went home from Holland Bloorview rehab hospital in August. He was talking again by May, but with a slow, husky Louis Armstrong voice.

The tubes went away. And Mavi went back to school, this time in a wheelchair.

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His class skipped the zoo and took a field trip to Variety Village instead. Maverick rolled in and there they were, dozens of his little schoolmates, in borrowed wheelchairs, waiting in the fieldhouse to surprise him. Welcome back, Mavi.

Now, he’s a Village regular. On his first visit, some older guys in wheelchairs high-fived him in the hall.

“It’s what I love about this place,” says Janna. “There’s a real community feeling.”

Maverick spotted kids playing Volt hockey, a power cart version of Canada’s game, and his eyes lit up.

Now, he’s practising with the Variety Village Volt team’s newbies. Which is where I find him, the other day, with his sister Dalia, 9, and one-year-old brother Salvador.

Mavi is the mellowest kid you will ever meet, patiently manoeuvring the twitchy Volt cart around the fieldhouse.

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“Never once has he ever complained about being in a wheelchair,” says his mom.

How long will he need that chair? Long hours of hard work lie ahead.

“I see him walking on his own, eventually,” says Janna. “We’re well on the way to getting our old Mavi back.”

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BE MAVI’S ALLY

Variety Village, as regular readers know, is a Scarborough sport complex geared to kids with disabilities. You can help it support Maverick Valle’s comeback by contributing to the Sun Christmas Fund for Variety Village at sunchristmasfund.ca.

You’ll join these donors on the honour roll:

Patricia and David Lloyd, Toronto, $100, in memory of Bill Lloyd.

Joanne and Earl Wedgewood, Campbellville, $100, in memory of brother Joey.         

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Bob and Anita Mitchell, Etobicoke, $250, in memory of Timothy.   

Diane Jackson, Pickering, $100

Joe King, High River, $100

Anonymous, $500

Ronald Lindemann, Scarborough, $50, in honour of son Christopher.

David Wells, Beeton, $100

Antonio Cardone, Guelph, $70

Karen Strobel, Winnipeg, $100, in honour of Dr. Lorna Strobel Stewart’s 91st birthday.

Ted and Collette Calis, Mississauga, $100

Samuel Cook, London, $100

Willis Towers Watson, Nashville, $35

Nancy Rychel, Toronto, $50

Keith and Suzanne Pennells, Whitby, $500

Mark Newbigging, Uxbridge, $50

Paul Reynolds, Burlington, $100

Barbara Foster, Etobicoke, $50

Marilyn Green, Mississauga, $50

Anonymous, $20

Duncan MacKenzie, Kawartha Lakes, $25

Jeff B. Timson, Markham, $55

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Scott and Stef Seon, Toronto, $70

Frank Gallo, Toronto, $50

Gail and Sheldon Rajesky, Thornhill, $300

Joyce Kornicky, Scarborough, $100

Jeff Prue, Oshawa, $100

Glen Farr, Toronto, $20

Gary and Lori Ridout, Scarborough, $100

Tony Lane, Newmarket, $50

Michael McCann, Aurora, $100

Bruce Bousfield, Milton, $250

Nancy Cavanagh, Toronto, $400

Carole Woolway, Barrie, $25

Ruby Knapp, Oshawa, $50

Michael Kemper, Toronto, $300

William E. Kemper, Toronto, $50

Barbara  Veater, Scarborough, $200

Dale Boyce, Ajax, $100

Brian & Nancy Evans, Bowmanville, $250

Noreen De Shane, London, $200

Stanley Miller, Oshawa, $30

Esther Goldberg, Toronto, $20

Marc Singleton, Scarborough, $20

Wayne Roberts, Toronto, $50

Thomas Dryburgh, Scarborough, $30

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Wayne Morrow, Sunderland, $100

Elaine Lee, Elora, $30

Wally Simpson, Scarborough, $100

Linda  Saville, Ajax, $55

Martina Koda, Mississauga, $100

Norman Vincent, Scarborough, $250

Dave and Donna Conboy, Oshawa, $50

Iffat Ladha, North York, $100

Bernice Collins, Toronto, $50

Mary Mark, Scarborough, $75

Joyce May, Brampton, $200

Susanne Voss, Pickering, $100

William Tang, Toronto, $30

Heather Wilson, Scarborough, $50

Karen Downes, Pickering, $25

Reuben and Dorothy Cluett, Ajax, $60

Russell Brown, Toronto, $75

Yvonne Pettit, Etobicoke, $2,000

Michael Gratton, Weston, $25

Tom Anderson, Toronto, $200

Margaret Agueci, Toronto, $50

Geoff Martin, Toronto, $100

Mary Weaver, Toronto, $100

Dianne Bridger, Scarborough, $50

Glenn Devereux, Toronto, $25

Victor and Patricia Galata, Mississauga, $200

Rolf Petersen, Scarborough, $100

Paul Beeston, Toronto, $250

Frank Bloye, Tamworth, $100

Glenn Runciman, Oakville, $100

Richard Kovats, Dutton, $200

Sukhvinder Kaloti, Brampton, $50

Pete Hetherington, Fort Erie, $50

TOTAL TO DATE: $94,189

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