The miracle boy

When Javale Morato, a Year 7 student at Christian Brothers College (CBC) in Adelaide was rushed to hospital on September 5 with a traumatic brain injury, doctors told the family to expect the worst.

 

A few hours earlier, his mum Teresa and four-year-old sister Jeorgianna had arrived at St Albans Reserve in suburban Clearview, to pick him up from athletics training. From the car, Teresa watched Javale have a drink of water and then throw the javelin before unbuckling her daughter’s seatbelt in the back seat. By the time she turned back, a group of students and teachers had gathered around a child lying on the ground.

 

Teresa scanned the field for her 12-year-old son. “I couldn’t find him anywhere so my heart begins to race, and I have to go and see,” she said. “That’s when I received a call on my phone and it was from the school, so I knew. I said, ‘I saw, I’m here’.”

 

She ran onto the field and was told Javale had been hit by a ball. “Some firemen came and put a tarpaulin around him,” Teresa said, tearfully. “In my mind, if they put the tent up it would mean the worst, so I kept telling them to move away from my son.”

 

A woman tried to calm her down, saying ‘he’s fine’. But she knew he wasn’t fine. Her fears were confirmed when the paramedics turned him over and she saw that his face was “all black” from a lack of oxygen.

 

She shouted to Javale, “Don’t go, you come back, you come back” as the paramedics performed CPR and put a needle in him, before transferring him to the ambulance.

 

 

The medical team wouldn’t let Teresa travel in the ambulance, so a friend was about to drive her to the hospital when Javale was removed from the vehicle and a doctor intubated him on the field.

 

Meanwhile, her husband Jason, a ‘fly in/fly out’ worker, had just knocked off when he received a phone call from a friend which he thought was a bit unusual. His initial dread was that something had happened to Teresa or Jeorgianna, not his active, sports-loving son.

 

“I started to panic, from then on I was trying to fly back but because I was in a remote area I couldn’t fly,” he said.

 

Jason’s supervisor and even the hospital social worker tried unsuccessfully to arrange a flight and he was forced to spend an agonising night in his room. Two close colleagues came to his room and “prayed and wept” with him.

 

Teresa cried as she repeated the doctor’s words – “severe traumatic brain injury” – and remembered being asked to sign a waiver for the high-risk operation on his brain. She was told Javale had stopped breathing for between five and 10 minutes.

 

“After the neurosurgeon left the room my friend and I started praying the Rosary.  We called our friends, they also started praying together. I called all the people – our priest, friends, family, everyone who could help us in that time,” Teresa said.

 

 

After the operation Javale was put in an induced coma for three days while the brain swelling subsided.

 

“It was the critical point. They put him into a cool mat because his temperature was getting high,” Teresa said. “After 72 hours they started to lower the medication to slowly wake him up … everything was running well at that time until he had a lung infection.”

 

Javale slept most of the time for the next two weeks, with his parents and sister by his side. The first sign of progress came after the doctors performed a tracheotomy to help air and oxygen reach his lungs. But it was impossible for Javale to speak until a smaller trachea with a speaker valve was inserted four weeks after the accident.

 

When Javale had his first MRI two days after the accident, the doctors pointed out the abnormalities in the scans. Two or three weeks later, he had another MRI. “Would you believe it … the doctors told us there is no difference from before,” Teresa said.

 

And yet Javale was making good progress including recognising his family and friends and regaining some movement on his right side, which was impacted the most by the injury to the left side of the brain.

 

“The doctors couldn’t explain his behaviour, and after that they said ‘we are not referring to the MRI results, we are clinically assessing him’.

 

Actually, since day one it’s already a miracle, like escaping this kind of injury, like from the surgery to the present,” Jason said. “You know miracles are happening every day, through prayer.”

 

Teresa and Jason, who migrated to Australia in 2015 and are members of the Filipino Catholic community and parishioners at Hectorville in Adelaide, have been overwhelmed by the response from people. Javale’s teachers and classmates have visited and prayed for him and CBC organised a video with messages from his friends and held a student liturgy and Mass. The family also received holy water from Lourdes, Portugal, Ireland and the Philippines while a friend’s parents who were on a pilgrimage in Europe asked everyone to pray for Javale. 

 

“We are so blessed to see how many people are joining us in prayer,” Teresa said.

 

“We were born and raised Catholics, and we do believe in miracles because that’s what’s happening to our son right now. There’s one time when we realised we can’t do anything, the doctors and nurses are doing their best to save our son, what we can do is to pray for all of them, and of course for Javale to fight for his life.”

 

His favourite sport is basketball – he won an MVP (Most Valued Player) award two weeks before the accident – and his talents extend to playing the piano and singing.

 

But most importantly, Teresa said he has a ‘kind heart’. “He wants everyone to be included and he only sees the goodness of the person – that’s why he has so many friends. I am very proud of my boy and really praying hard that he will get through this point of his life. God’s will, he can do all those things again like before.”

 

The staff at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital have been “so wonderful”. Teresa said if she had learnt anything it was that “God sends us good people to help us”.

 

After having surgery to replace the damaged part of his skull with a titanium plate, remarkably, Javale was discharged from hospital in early December and spent Christmas at home with his family. He will continue his rehabilitation as an outpatient.

 

On the day he left hospital, he was buoyed by a visit from two of his closest school friends who presented him with a cheque from CBC for $15,140. The money was added to funds already raised from a silent auction run by the college’s Parents and Friends Association.

 

This article first appeared in The Southern Cross, Adelaide. Photos courtesy Ben Macmahon https://www.benmacmahon.com/

 

Image: After three months Javale leaves hospital with his family.

Image: A very special 13th birthday celebration was held for Javale in October.

Image: Javale was put in an induced coma for three days.

 

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