A normal headache threatened 14-year-old Justine Cantrell’s life, but music brought her back.

Wednesday, March 12 started out as a normal day as Justine went about her normal morning routine, picking out clothes and getting ready for Central Middle School in Murfreesboro, Tenn. “She complained of a headache, and I told her it was picture day [so] she had to go to school,” her brother Clint recalls.

A little later, Justine told Clint her head still hurt, and he gave her some painkillers. But the medicine didn’t make the headache go away. Clint later found his younger sister unconscious on the floor.

Clint then rushed her to Middle Tennessee Medical Clinic in Murfreesboro. Within 15 minutes of being at the emergency room, Justine was on life flight to Vanderbilt’s Children’s Hospital in Nashville.

Clint was then told that Justine had an arterio-venous malformation (AVM), which had burst. Blood had pooled in her brain and caused unknown damage, meaning she needed immediate surgery. “When the surgery was finished, the surgeon painted a bleak picture,” Clint says. “He said she might never wake up again.”

When Clint saw Justine for the first time after the surgery, she looked like an entirely different person. “Her head was shaved; she was unconscious. There were IVs everywhere. It was very traumatic,” Clint says. And Justine was on a respirator that breathed for her.

“I went there on the night it happened. The doctor told me the first 48 hours are the most important,” according to Scott Kinney, a band teacher Central Middle School. After a traumatic brain injury, rehabilitation and stimulation usually starts within 24 to 48 hours for best results.

Even though Justine was still unconscious, Kinney and his sax-playing friend Dennis Taylor visited her and began playing. “I got in her face and pretended like I was in class,” Kinney says. He even yelled like he does to get his students ready to start practice.

Taylor then played a scale routine to warm up, which stirred Justine. Her breathing rate doubled from six breaths per minute to 12. Taylor played some jazz and blues tunes. And, miraculously, Justine began breathing on her own.

“When we were done, they took her off the respirator – and she woke up that afternoon,” Kinney says.

Kinney returned the next day with Dana Robbins, another sax player. As Robbins played, Justine held on to the horn to feel the vibrations of the music. Kinney went back with more music. Students from Central Middle School visited to play. And with each visit, Justine’s condition improved.

“I was just thinking stimulation …” Kinney says. “I prayed it would [help], but I had no idea it would be so profound.”

AVMs are congenital malformations of blood vessels. Often thought of as short circuits, AVMs are found where capillaries are absent. Many people with AVMs have no idea. Typically, they are discovered after a patient undergoes a brain scan for some other reason or after they rupture.

When Justine’s AVM ruptured, it caused her to collapse. At Vanderbilt, a neurosurgeon performed an emergency embolization, or plugging of the ruptured vessels. To perform the surgery, part of Justine’s skull was removed to relieve pressure on the brain. When the AVM ruptured, it caused more than a cup of blood to pool on the left side of her brain, resulting in stroke-like symptoms.

Tragically, Justine was only 7 years old when her father died in 2001, and she was 10 when her mother died. Orphaned, she was left her in the care of her older brother Clint and his wife, Rayna. “She’s our oldest child. I don’t look at her as a sister-in-law,” Rayna says, adding there’s a 21-year difference between Justine and Clint.

Clint says that after his mother passed away, he took Justine in – even though he and Rayna already had two of their own children. “It’s not responsibility as much as what we had to do,” Clint says. “She had a lot of emotional trauma in her life, and I wanted to give her a stable environment.”

And he certainly did. Justine quickly rose to the top of her class at Central Middle School and played “a central part in the Central Band” as a saxophonist, Kinney says.

“She’s brilliant,” Clint says, adding his sister was an avid reader. “She’s always been a kid who seemed to be beyond her years.”

To bring her back, the doctor encouraged as much stimulation as possible as soon as possible. This suggestion inspired Kinney to visit with a fellow saxophone player the following morning. And within the first week after the AVM ruptured, Justine could play parts of songs on her saxophone, even though she couldn’t speak or read a written word.

Although she’s improving each day, Justine still faces an uphill battle. After weeks of therapy at Vanderbilt University and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, she is still having trouble speaking and cannot count to 20.

Clint says Justine has short-term memory, speaking, and reading problems, but he’s hopeful that she will fully recover. “She’s scrappy,” Rayna says. “But she’s having to relearn from the beginning.”

To relearn everything, Justine has enrolled at Special Kids Inc., a nonprofit organization that provides therapy services for children with developmental and medical needs in Murfreesboro. She’ll get physical, occupational, and speech therapy there. Because she can’t return to school, she’ll have teacher come to her home.

“They’re going to have to start from scratch. It’s all in there, but Justine [just] can’t get it out [yet],” Rayna says.


Source: Michelle Williard/The Murfreesboro Post