ADAM BIBEAULT JR
WESTFIELD – For Westfield resident Adam Bibeault Jr. – AJ to his family and friends – Christmas will not be the same this year.
Bibeault, 9, is spending this holiday at Boston Children’s Hospital where he is being treated for a brain arteriovenous malformation. His mother Angelina Calsetta said they had no idea Bibeault had this abnormality.
“It is called an AVM for short and basically means his capillaries didn’t form in part of his brain,” she said. “It isn’t something we knew he had, and his surgeon told us you typically don’t know they exist until something like this happens.”
Calsetta said Bibeault was complaining of a headache and was unable to keep anything down, so she took him to the emergency room at Baystate Medical Center where a CT scan revealed that he had bleeding on his brain.
“We were then taken by Life Star to Boston Children’s Hospital for emergency brain surgery,” said Calsetta “They put a drain on the left to help relieve some of the pressure the blood and fluid had caused and went into the right side to remove part of the clot.”
Bibeault will need another surgery to go correct the AVM to ensure this doesn’t happen again any time soon.
“AJ is typically the sweetest kid you could ever meet, he has loads of friends at school, loves his siblings, and will help people in any way he can,” Calsetta said. “He is constantly doing things to try to make people smile whether it is telling jokes, playing pranks, or giving them presents.”
Bibeault has four siblings, Ayla, 13, Anthony, 13, Willow, 3, and Noah, 2.
“He loves them all and they are having a tough time without him and don’t like seeing him this way, but still are happy to try to play with him as best as they can right now,” Calsetta said. “We are all holding up as best as we can, but AJ has been an absolute beast with this. He complains very little and he has just been so brave through this all.”
Calsetta said Bibeault is “very bummed” about missing Christmas and everything fun that was planned for the days leading up to it, so when a family friend thought about asking for Christmas cards for him, Calsetta agreed it would bring a smile to his face.
“AJ is actually very excited to see how many cards he will get, he originally thought he would get 100 but now he thinks it’ll be closer to 300! We are just looking to brighten this for him as much as we can because right now, we do not know how long he will be away from home, but we do know this will be a very long road,” Calsetta said.
Bibeault’s aunt created a GoFundMe page “Assistance for AJ’s Family” to help with costs associated with his hospitalization, including traveling to Boston.
“Everything we raise will help AJ’s family with travel expenses to and from Boston, household expenses while his mom is out of work caring for him, and anything else that may help ease the hardship of AJ being in a hospital 90 miles away from home,” states the fundraiser page. “There is no such thing as a donation too small. All money raised will directly benefit a Western Mass. family and will have a huge impact.”
Christmas cards can be sent to Adam Bibeault, 183 Main St., 2nd Floor, Westfield, MA 01085.
