Hi, my name is Kristi Bynum, and I am creating this GoFund for AJ Wishne.

AJ Wishne, an active and athletic 15-year-old from Lee's Summit, Missouri, had a stroke on Saturday, May 28, 2022.

AJ had just gotten to the gym with his brother Nate and was doing a foot press. While attempting to do reps, he kept forgetting the count. That let him know something was wrong. He went over to Nate to tell him something was not right; by the time they got to the car to head home, AJ could no longer talk and was starting to have drooping in his face, and his right arm was no longer functioning.

Nate called his mom, Angie, and they agreed to head to St. Luke’s East Hospital in Lee Summit. (Never even thinking stroke because of his age.) They just knew they should get him to a hospital. Since he couldn’t really explain what was wrong, they didn’t know if he bit his tongue, fell, hit his head or something else. When they got to the ER and finally got him back to be seen, they did a CT scan and realized he had a brain bleed.

The doctor wanted to life-flight AJ and Angie to KU or Children’s Mercy whichever would accept him first, but unfortunately the helicopter was going to take 20 minutes to arrive. The hospital got ahold of the Lee's Summit fire department an ambulance rushed them to the University of Kansas Medical Center.

Through a variety of procedures and a cerebral angiography, the most detailed test to diagnose an AVM. The test revealed the location and characteristics of the feeding arteries and draining veins and showed that AJ was born with a brain arteriovenous malformation (AVM). An AVM is a tangle of abnormal blood vessels connecting arteries and veins in the brain. They are rare and occur in only 1% of the population. Sometimes they are found when other health issues occur and can be fixed before it ruptures and causes a stroke or brain damage. In AJ’s case, these larger veins were putting too much blood into the smaller veins and they exploded. When it burst it put a large amount of blood on his brain causing his stroke.

Surgery was set for Tuesday, May 31st to remove the blood, the blood clot and to repair and remove the broken veins. The Doctors said there was a chance he could have another stroke, so Kirk and Angie opted to go ahead with the surgery while already at KU to prevent the fear or worry of when the next one would occur. Each day in the hospital leading up to surgery, AJ was making good strides towards being able to speak again. By Tuesday, he had made significant progress and could begin talking in a way that was understandable. He was still forgetting words and miss using words and had slurring, broken speech, but he could get his thoughts across. His right arm started to function again; while it was still numb, he could start to grip. His surgery was to begin around 2pm and was expected to last up to 5 hours.

Angie and Kirk were updated a few times during surgery that all was going well. They were able to successfully drain the blood that was putting pressure on his brain and fix the tangle of veins to repair the AVM. AJ’s surgery lasted 5 hours then it took the recovery team quite a while to wake him up. He was very sleepy the days following surgery, but when he was awake he was showing good signs of recovery.

After several specialists and visits with OT, PT and speech, it was determined that AJ could be released. AJ left the hospital on Friday, June 3rd, just a week from the date of his stroke. He has a long road of recovery ahead of him. The doctors believe AJ will be able to regain full use of his arm and leg. He said that speech could take up to five years to recover fully. He will have OT, PT and Speech therapy several times a week. Angie called many different places to try to get AJ in as quickly as possible, KU was over a month and a half out while Children’s was two months out, but Ability KC was able to get him scheduled for the following week.

AJ’s biggest wish, besides for this to not have happened, is to get a therapy dog. He is pretty scared right now and would like a therapy dog to be with him as he goes through his rehab and recovery. AJ's parents are public school teachers, Angie, a Kindergarten teacher and Kirk, a middle school history teacher and coach for various school and league sports. Both of them have poured into kiddos all across our community - I hope that together we can give back to them. Not only is the ICU hospital stay, brain surgery and therapy going to be expensive, a therapy dog can cost up to $30,000. It is the goal for AJ to be ready to return to high school in the fall for his Sophomore year and to be able to wrestle and play baseball for his Tigers. Everyone remains optimistic that he can make a full recovery given his age.

Thank you for taking the time to read his story and pray for AJ and his family. Please feel free to reach out with specific questions and forward this to other family and friends. Let's support the Wishne Family in this time of need.