‘Unresponsive’: Mum’s horror warning about eight-year-old son

A mum in Victoria has urged parents to trust their instincts after her eight-year-old son almost died during a sudden medical emergency.

A mum in Victoria has urged parents to trust their instincts after her eight-year-old son almost died during a sudden medical emergency.

Jace Noakes had been his “usual, happy self” on the morning of August 15, when he began to complain of a headache.

Within 20 minutes, he had collapsed and was “unresponsive”, according to a GoFundMe page, and “from that moment onwards, the Noakes family has been on a whirlwind journey” that turned their lives “upside down”.

After his mum, Kylee, called triple-zero, Jace was rushed to Ballarat Base Hospital, where he was placed in a medically-induced coma and a CT scan revealed a bleed in his brain.

From there, Jace was transported to Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital and “taken straight to theatre” to undergo an urgent late-night procedure.

In a bid to release the pressure on the Year 2 student’s brain, doctors inserted an external ventricular drain (EVD).

An MRI after the surgery finally revealed what had caused the emergency: an arteriovenous malformation (AVM), which occurs when blood vessels form incorrectly, becoming twisted and enlarged.

A mum in Victoria has urged parents to trust their instincts after her eight-year-old son almost died during a sudden medical emergency. Picture: GoFundMe

The cluster in Jace’s brain – likely “a condition he would have had since birth” – had burst, creating the bleed that clotted deep in the cerebellum, which is responsible for muscle movement regulation and balance, at the back of his head.

The little boy spent a week “sedated and ventilated” to allow his brain to rest, before doctors performed another surgery to remove the clot and damaged vessels.

Jace was then eased out of the coma over the course of multiple days – while his “dazed” and “numb” family awaited positive news.

“We could have lost him. If surgeons didn’t operate when they did, he would have died,” Ms Noakes told 7NEWS.

Jace remains in hospital as he relearns to walk, talk and eat again – but is “doing really well”, she said, and will hopefully return home within the next month.

A GoFundMe page has been set up to help the family with the associated costs of Jace’s recovery and rehabilitation.

Ms Noakes also called on fellow mums and dads to trust their gut when it comes to their children, given the rare nature of AVMs and the lack of warning signs.

“If I had let him go to bed, we would have lost him that night,” she said.