A son comes home – that’s what matters to Valley Center family

One of the last things Erica Banuelos remembers her 12-year-old son telling her before he lost most of the use of his vocal cords was “Mom, I love you.”

JoJo Lerma said the words to his mother as she dropped him off at a Valley Center High School football game – before he collapsed.

These days, JoJo has a tube in his throat to help him breathe, and his vocal cords remain partly paralyzed, so he can’t talk normally yet. But he can still be heard if you sit near him and concentrate. His mouth and tongue can still position themselves to form and project the hard sounds. He has no problem enunciating “tra-che-os-to-my,” a surgical procedure to put a hole into the windpipe to help someone breathe. If a word has a “t” in it, JoJo can make it be heard.

At age 12, after getting a concussion in football practice, JoJo suffered something like a stroke, his parents say.

You could tell his brain was processing on a recent day as he sat at the kitchen table. His parents spoke about what happened to him. His eyes fixed on his father, Jose Lerma, who took a layoff from his electrician job to care for his son, then his mother, whose voice caught at times. He smiled and mouthed words to them. They bantered.

His eyes reflect that he is a happy seventh-grader – with a tube in his throat and often a bandage on his left hand, his dominant hand. A scar shows beneath his thick, dark hair. Though he darts across the living room and slips into a chair with the swift ease of any 12-year-old, his left side droops, and he walks with a limp.

“He’s not depressed,” his mother said. Not embarrassed. The injury didn’t take his personality. It’s her same boy. “He’s the one who motivates me to move forward.”

This Christmas, JoJo and his family realize what they have. He could have died on the grass where he collapsed or in the emergency room or in the Wichita hospital bed where he lay sedated for five weeks. After suffering a concussion at football practice two weeks before his collapse, his brain was bleeding drip by drip without anyone realizing it until it was almost too late, his parents say. They point out that he could have stopped breathing in his sleep, could have fallen with no one to help.

At the emergency room, doctors told his mother that her son had a 50/50 chance of surviving.

His father says he reminds himself “to just thank God for giving him back to me.”

‘My head hurts’

His parents believe, after piecing together in their minds what happened to JoJo, that it all began in late August when their son had a head-on collision with another player at football practice.

JoJo played wide receiver. “He loves to hit,” his father says.

The boy and his parents didn’t realize until later that he had hurt his brain, that it would set off bleeding that wouldn’t stop.

Within three days of the concussion, he was sleeping more and staying home from school. His eyes turned bloodshot, and he kept saying his head hurt. His mother gave him Tylenol.

At the doctor’s office, she asked whether her son should get an MRI, but the doctor thought it was seasonal allergies, noting that the boy wasn’t vomiting. The doctor told them it was only a mild concussion, his parents say.

Later, his mother cried for three days because she didn’t push harder for the MRI, which could have detected what was happening in his brain.

About two weeks passed between the head-on collision and the night that JoJo collapsed. His father was working out of state. It was a Friday night, with hamburgers at home and horsing around in the kitchen before his mother dropped him off at the high school so he could watch the football game.

After he left his mother with “Mom, I love you,” she got another call.

It was her son on his cellphone, crying hard, choking on tears, mumbling. But he got these words out: “My head hurts. My head hurts.” After JoJo collapsed, another boy’s mother held him. His left side drooped. He threw up.

At the emergency room, doctors told her that her son might not live. “You never expect to hear that, you know?” she says now. It turned out that he had a blood clot on his brain.

Swelling on the right side of his brain affected the left side of his body. A medical team did emergency surgery to remove an egg-sized blood clot.

JoJo’s father flew home from his out-of-town job, and his parents cried and prayed and got help from many sources. The Valley Center community brought food to the family: smoked ribs, chili, casseroles, brownies, cookies. “Everything you could think of, they brought to us,” his father said. Priests came. JoJo’s middle school football team used GoFundMe to raise $6,300 to help with unexpected expenses. The electricians union paid his father’s union dues.

“My son touched a lot of lives,” his father said.

He counted eight doctors weighing in on how to treat JoJo.

But even with medical science and state-of-the-art procedures, nothing is guaranteed.

“All you can do is pray,” his father said.

Living at the hospital

The surgery seemed to go fine, but it would take time to know the extent of the brain injury. “They said they didn’t know if he was going to be a vegetable,” Jose Lerma said.

JoJo was in an induced coma for five weeks. His father’s eyes well with tears as he recalls that period: Five weeks. Your son is out. You live at the hospital. You’re exhausted. When your 12-year-old is in a coma, you change diaper after diaper, give him sponge baths.

As he came to, they tried to check on him with questions, recording the moment.

“Poppy, can you wiggle your toes?” someone asks.

“He’s trying.”

“Can you open your eyes? Can you look at Daddy?”

JoJo kept pointing at the ceiling. Someone asked him: “What do you see? Do you see an angel?” He nodded.

When JoJo got his breathing treatment, he would struggle so much, his heart would accelerate and his father would try to calm him.

After he improved enough, he went to Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital in Lincoln, Neb., and his father went with him while his mother stayed in Valley Center with their two other children. Mother, sister and brother made the four-and-a-half-hour drive to Lincoln every weekend so they could spend time with JoJo.

When he arrived at the rehab hospital, he had trouble with the basics: getting himself out of bed, taking a shower, brushing his teeth. Because the brain injury affected his left side and he’s left-handed, he had to learn to do things with his right arm.

Just raising his left arm to his shoulder remains a struggle. It hurts enough to make him cry, his father says.

“It’s going to be long road for JoJo in gaining more function in that arm,” said one of his therapists at Madonna, Kelly Myers. Still, she said, there is a good sign: “He pushed himself.”

“He’s the strongest little kid I’ve known,” his father said.

The kid who got hurt practicing football and who hopes to play the game again got a visit from members of the University of Nebraska football team. He posed with them. They lined up and flexed their right arms together.

His parents think that the tracheostomy and various emergency interventions putting tubes down his throat damaged his vocal cords, leaving him unable to talk normally. He has compensated by sending text messages and using sign language. He mimics holding a bottle and lifting it to his lips. Translation: I could use some Gatorade.

What matters

He came home in late November and is continuing the long process to heal and regain mobility. His father believes his son’s young age gives him an advantage. JoJo tells his parents: “God’s testing me.” There was a time when the boy told his father he didn’t think he would be able to go to college because he couldn’t walk and talk anymore.

His parents think he will return to school sometime after the first of the year.

On a recent day, he and his father posed for photographs outside their house. They clowned around. When the photographer asked JoJo’s father to stand closer to his son, he turned to the boy, and their eyes met. As they smiled at each other, Jose Lerma puckered his lips and half-faked blowing a kiss to his son.

Although the family has medical insurance, they’re not sure how much of the expenses will be covered. Just the first set of medical bills comes to half a million dollars.

After JoJo’s injury, his grandmother went to a church in Mexico and crawled with difficulty on her knees to a shrine where she placed JoJo’s picture. She sees her grandson as a miracle. Once he is healed, she wants to bring him to the shrine as proof.

This Christmas will be different, JoJo’s father said. Their experience has made them more humble, made them realize that what matters is being together and giving back. They want to volunteer at a food bank.

The two other children, 11-year-old Analisa and 8-year-old Jiovoni, have been understanding while their parents have had to focus on their oldest child. The younger kids have been mature and unselfish, the parents say.

They saw their parents crying over their older brother at the hospital. When their father took his other children for a walk, he wanted to know how they were handling all the trauma and strain.

“I’m asking them, ‘What do you guys think about this?’ ” he recalled.

And their message to their father: Don’t worry, Dad.

He’s coming home.

This story was originally published December 24, 2015 at 12:49 PM with the headline "A son comes home – that’s what matters to Valley Center family."