No warning before 10-year-old boy has brain aneurysm rupture

HOUSTON (FOX 26) - It is every mother's nightmare -- your kid is perfectly healthy one minute, and the next, he's in the hospital, diagnosed with a condition you never knew about.

It's what happened to one boy from Fort Bend.

Leslie Butler said her son Bryce has always been active and healthy. She described him as an energetic kid and a dedicated Little League baseball player. To many, he was the picture of health, and that's what his mom thought -- until what happened on Monday.

“I didn’t know what to do,” said Butler. “It's a very scary thing.”

Bryce was in his 5th grade class at Sugar Mill elementary school in Fort Bend County when he began slurring his words.

“He tried to talk to the teacher but she said he was mumbling, like he was trying to tell her something but it wasn’t coming out clear, and, at that point, she knew something was wrong,” said Butler.

It turns out -- Bryce had a brain aneurysm.

He was taken in for emergency brain surgery to remove the clot and has not been fully awake since.
His mother said doctors had told her that he had an arteriovenous malformation or AVM -- which is a tangled web of arteries and veins that are abnormally connected.

“It’s not very common, but when it is present, it's something that's known to have high risk of bleeding over the course of someone's lifetime,” said Dr. Saint-Aaron Morris, the chief neurosurgical resident at UT Health.

According to Dr. Morris, about two percent of the population have AVMs.

Unfortunately, some people who have them, usually don’t know they have them  until something -- like an aneurysm rupture happens. But other times -- there are signs.

“Generally, kids don’t complain about headaches, and of course, if your child starts complaining of headaches that are severe or start having seizures, it should be evaluated,” said Dr. Morris.

For this mom -- all she wants is for her baby to come back to her.

”All we're doing is just sitting and praying and hoping that he comes out ok,” said Butler.

If you’d like to help the family out with medical bills, head to their GoFund Me page: https://www.gofundme.com/3oztlx4?pc=sms_db_co2876_v1