Seven-year-old Julian Cordero, a second-grader at Northmead Elementary School, was named Student of the Month and made the honor roll for the first time in February.
“He was making big strides,” said his mother, Melissa Cordero, who described her son as an ordinary little boy who likes baseball, riding his bike, listening to music, playing Roblox, spending time with his cousins, and accompanying his big brother on trips downtown to get bagels.
Then, on March 24, for the second time in his young life, Julian suffered from a ruptured AVM (arteriovenous malformation) on the left side of his brain.
According to the Mayo Clinic, a brain AVM is a tangle of blood vessels that connect arteries and veins in the brain. The tangled knot grows over the years and sometimes ruptures.
Julian is currently at UCSF’s Benioff Children’s Hospital in San Francisco, where his mother said his condition has recently stabilized.
“He’s awake and he’s more stable and he’s out of the ICU,” said Cordero, who added that a portion of the left side of Julian’s skull — a “bone flap” — has been removed to accommodate the swelling of his brain. “We find out Thursday when his surgery next week will be.”
After being rushed to Memorial Medical Center in Modesto on the morning of March 24, Julian was transported by helicopter to UCSF.
“He told me the day before he thought he had a headache,” said Cordero. “But he went to school and baseball practice and we sang happy birthday to my oldest son’s girlfriend and he was very excited. He went to bed like normal and woke up the next morning with a headache.
“He actually doesn’t complain really at all, so when he was holding his face, I knew something was different.”
Cordero called 9-1-1, while 21-year-old Marcus held his brother.
“Marcus said to me, ‘Something isn’t right. He feels different. He’s seizing. I can feel it.’”
It was the second time in four and half years that Julian suffered an AVM rupture.
An aneurysm clip was placed on the first AVM back in 2018 — because of its position on the brain not all of it could be removed — and in 2020 Julian began undergoing radiation treatment. An examination in 2021 showed that the AVM had shrunk. In fact, he was just a few months away from a follow-up appointment that would determine the next step in his recovery.
Sadly, that appointment didn’t come soon enough.
Now, the Cordero family faces a mountain of medical expenses in the coming months after surgeries and what will be a lengthy rehabilitation process. Currently, Melissa Cordero and her husband, John, are staying at the family house at Benioff, while Marcus, Jasmine, 21, Mason, 19, and John Jr., 11, reside in Patterson.
To help defray costs, Cordero’s cousin, Chico Rodriguez of Keyes, is helping to organize a raffle for a pair of Sacramento Kings-Golden State Warriors playoff tickets for Game 4 on Sunday at the Chase Center in San Francisco.
“We’ve set up an Instagram page and a Venmo account,” said Rodriguez. “We’re selling the raffle tickets for $25 apiece and we’ll announce the winner live on Instagram on Saturday at 5 p.m. The game will be Sunday at 6 p.m.”
Because the Kings lead the series 2-0, the best-of-seven affair is not guaranteed to need a fifth game, so Game 5 tickets are not yet on sale. Had the teams split the first two games, a fifth game would be assured and it would’ve given supporters more time to sell raffle tickets.
“Time is of the essence,” said Rodriguez.
Julian’s Instagram page and Venmo account both can be accessed by visiting @jujustrong1.
“This bleed is significantly larger,” explained Cordero. “It’s called a midline shift. The left side of his brain has shifted to the right side.”
Cordero said Julian’s neurologists are cautiously optimistic.
“They believe with a large bleed, what happens is that sometimes the path of the blood creates a safe passage to the AVM itself, so it can be removed. The goal is, next week sometime, to be able to remove the AVM completely. And then if the swelling has gone down enough, to put back the bone flap and start therapy. It’ll be a long road back for him.”
