Meet Our Champions

On Thanksgiving weekend, five-year-old Reya was watching holiday movies and making a gingerbread house before going to sleep. She awoke screaming, became stiff, vomited, and couldn’t open her eyes. Her parents called an ambulance, and a CT scan at a local hospital revealed a massive brain bleed from a ruptured aneurysm. She was urgently transferred to Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU (CHoR), a Children’s Miracle Network hospital, where a waiting team placed a drain to relieve pressure. Doctors discovered Reya had been born with an arteriovenous malformation (AVM), a tangle of blood vessels that can rupture without warning. Reya was unconscious and placed in a medically induced coma for two weeks, spent a month in the hospital, and returned six months later for an 11-hour surgery to remove the AVM. Thanks to CHoR’s expert, compassionate care, Reya made a full recovery. Now eleven, she swims, loves to sing, and dreams of becoming a neurosurgeon.