Former patient returns May 20 for Pavilion piano performance

To show gratitude to his care team, former PICU patient Kyle Benton is visiting the UC Davis Medical Center as a performer, not a patient, when he plays the piano in the Pavilion Lobby on May 20.

Benton first came to the UC Davis Medical Center as a patient in September 2020. He suffered a traumatic brain injury from a longboarding accident, which put him in a coma in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit.

While with her son, Sharon Benton passed the piano in the Pavilion several times a day.

“I would talk to Kyle and tell him, ‘One day you’ll sit at the piano downstairs and play,’” Sharon Benton said. “We would take walks while he was in rehab, we would walk by the piano and say, ‘Someday, we’ll come back when you’re ready to play again.’ We said the same thing when he walked out of the hospital seven and a half weeks after his injury.”

Sharon says Kyle has enjoyed music his whole life and that music was therapy for him long before the accident.

“He has never given up,” she said. “He went from a .5 percent chance of survival to finishing his second semester at BYU-Idaho.”

The family said their wish is for Kyle to play the piano for his medical team as a “message of hope, love and human compassion.”

Kyle Benton will play for approximately half an hour starting at 11 a.m. on Friday, May 20. All are welcome and encouraged to come listen.

Related: After a tragic longboarding accident, one patient fights to regain all that was lost