A healing path begins with teamwork: Path Appleton's story

BERRIEN COUNTY, Mich. -- A local teen's long path to recovery is finally leading her home.

After five months of major surgeries, stays in multiple hospitals, and uncertainty about the future, 16-year-old Path Appleton is getting ready to come back home.

Her rugby teammates are making sure she feels welcome when she gets home, but they say they're just returning the favor.

"I've never really done sports or been good at it, so I didn't think I was going to join but I did because of her," says one of Path's teammates. "Now, like we said, it's like a second family."

There wouldn't be a girls rugby team at Saint Joseph High School if it weren't for Path.

"It started last spring; we started teaching the game to kids at Saint Joe two days a week and we invited boys and girls and we said, 'Hey come learn about rugby and you might enjoy it,'" explains Dan LaFond, Head Coach for the St. Joseph Girls Rugby Team. "Path was the first girl to come play and it was mostly boys at every practice. By gosh, every week, two days a week, she was at every practice. Path is the girl we built the girls team on."

Path's first challenge was this past fall, leading the team through their first season.

Now, she faces a whole different kind of challenge.

"It was any regular day, and then it's like our world turned upside down," recalls Path's mother, Elizabeth Appleton.

It all began on December 2nd, when Elizabeth received a call from her daughter wanting to be picked up from school because she wasn't feeling well.

"By the time I parked the car and got into the office, she was unconscious," Appleton remembers.

Path's condition quickly declined, and she ended up in the hospital and her heart would even briefly stop there.

A team of doctors pieced together that Path had an AVM in her brain; a tangle of blood vessels creating irregular connections between arteries and veins, disrupting blood flow and preventing tissues from receiving oxygen.

It was a life-altering diagnosis that would lead Path to three major brain surgeries and several stays at multiple Michigan hospitals.

Then, finally, she got the all-clear, and will be returning home Wednesday for the first time in 142 days.

"It has been so difficult, kind of the day- to-day and even just trying to wrap our heads around what happened to her," says Appleton. "But it's made everything easier because we know how much everyone loves us and supports us."

She says the Saint Joe community has wrapped their arms around her family with immense support, with fundraisers and donations, like their brand-new wheelchair ramp, which Path's teammates are decorating for her arrival.

"It was immediately like, 'What are we gonna do? How are we gonna welcome her home? How are we gonna decorate her house? Let's get together,'" LaFond says.

"I'm really glad that we're all here to support her, just like she supported us," says Path's teammate.

It'll most likely be several years until Path fully recovers, but her family, teammates, and surrounding community are ready to support her through it all.

"She's like our spirit animal," LaFond says. "We look up to her and we're so proud of her and seeing her like this, we know she's going to recover and be back to the way she was one day, and we can't wait to be there when she does."

"It's not even a doubt in our mind, she's going to get better," says Appleton. "She needs time, and I think, and I know being close to her family and friends is going to make it a little bit easier for her."

Besides a spotfund page to raise money for Path's family, her support system is in the early stages of planning a rummage sale to raise additional funds that will be held on June 12th and 13th in Saint Joseph.

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