Learning to Hit Curve Balls: Mike Valliant

Learning to Hit Curve Balls

by Michael Valliant

Six years ago this month, life threw a curve ball we weren’t ready for. While visiting her mom’s family in Pennsylvania, my daughter Ava had a seizure that led her to be flown by helicopter to Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh. I was sitting in my sunroom at home in Oxford at 9 p.m., got a phone call and was on the road within a few minutes. August 6 is a date forever etched into my mind and soul. Damn curve balls.

Ava was 10 years old at the time. She spent 10 days in pediatric intensive care and, all told, about a month in the hospital between neurology and the rehab unit. After EEGs and MRIs and who knows what other acronyms, the likely diagnosis was that Epstein-Barr Virus had gotten