With Thanksgiving six days away, doctors tested and found no nerve conductivity in the top half of the left side of Matt's face.
The nerve was either traumatized or severed.
If severed, the window to repair it would close in days. And repair was still a long shot, not without its own risks.
But without the nerve, Matt would never be able to smile, eat, or speak normally.
For the first time, Matt took a good look in a mirror.
"I look fine, Mom," he wrote, his jaw still wired shut.
"Well, your smile is a bit off," she replied, with loving understatement.
"Isn't my smile fine?" he asked Emily.
"Well, not really," she said. "It's OK, though."
In all honesty, Matt said, his face didn't look that bad to him, and didn't upset him.
"It did not seem that important to me," he recalled. "I had overcome so much, and at the end of the day I was alive. My mind and legs were working. I was living."
On Monday, Nov. 24, doctors found a bit of conductivity and concluded the nerve might recover on its own.
Thanksgiving was in three days. Matt insisted in notes and text messages that he would be out by then.
He told staff to stop pumping in any nutrition. He'd suck down 3,000 calories a day, and he upped his diet to six juice boxes of Breeze, three cans of high-protein milk, and his peanut-butter shake.
On Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, out came the feeding tube, though not his trache tube. Matt had had five operations, and his doctors wanted to leave it in, just in case he needed another.
Matt's doctors were astonished that he didn't need rehab. It was "remarkable," said trauma surgeon Calland.
The Millers would spend Thanksgiving at the family's duplex at Wintergreen, Va., 45 minutes away, so Matt could be near the hospital.
Matt's mother, Nancy Miller, an archivist at the University of Pennsylvania who'd spent every day at her son's side, learned how to clean out the trache tube. She also was given wire cutters and taught how to open his jaw should he choke.
At 9 p.m. Wednesday, when word spread that Matt was leaving, staffers came to see for themselves.
A nurse rolled in a wheelchair.
"I'm walking out of here on my own," Matt wrote her.
Matt, for the first time, put on the T-shirt Bernardino had given him.
Don't give up, don't ever give up. . . .
Walking into the November chill, Matt raised a fist in triumph. His brother, Michael, took a photo with his cell phone.
His father, weeping, hugged him and said, "This is the biggest competition you've ever won."
The family had made no plans for Thanksgiving, and Wintergreen's buffet was sold out.
When Mike Miller explained the circumstances, the resort packed up takeout.
Matt, who'd been reading up on blended food, conducted his first experiment.
He blended sweet potatoes with milk and sucked down orange slop through a straw.
He didn't rinse the blender, so when he mixed turkey with chicken broth, it came out orange. He slurped that down.
Then he blended mashed potatoes with milk.
Finally, he blended pumpkin pie.
"No meal," he said, "ever tasted so good."
Contact staff writer Michael Vitez at 215-854-5639 or mvitez@phillynews.com.
