Bad doctors diagnosed my brain aneurysm at 37

Living in New York, Julie Brothers is not alien to a war – whether for her dream work, a place in a filled metro or the last slices of pizza after a long day.

But last year, she found herself in a struggle for her life.

At the age of 37, the brothers suffered an aneurysm of the broken brain that went without being treated for more than 36 hours after doctors initially diagnosed its malice.

Dangerous delay made him serious risk of a second bleeding that could have resulted in irreversible brain damage, stroke or even death.

“You know your body better than anyone else,” they told the brothers posting. “You may not be able to determine exactly what’s going on, but if you feel like something is wrong, you probably are right.”

Lost signs, great risk

In addition to her high stress work on TV production, the brothers lived a relatively healthy lifestyle without major medical problems.

“Before aneurysm, I think a sprinkled ankle was probably the worst of my health issues,” she said. But everything changed on the night of April 23, 2024.

The brothers were winging the house, hugged on her laptop and the scarf below the pickup when she was hit by a severe pain in the back of her head from nowhere.

“I was never shot in the head, however, if I were to compare it to nothing, it was so unexpected,” she said. “It was like something torn inside me.”

She had never experienced a migraine – but she would have heard stories of horror from friends and wondered if that was her first.

“I started thinking, wow. I think people are not joking because that’s very terrible,” she said.

Nausea, dizziness, unclear vision and a neck so rigid that it could barely move. She managed to get a glass of water from the kitchen before collapsing in bed – but by the next morning, her symptoms were only worsened.

“I was vomiting and I was getting dehydrated enough because I couldn’t even hold a sip of water at that point,” she said.

“I wondered,” Are I blowing this in proportion? Am I crazy? “”

Brothers Julie

Her neck was still rigid. Although meningitis thought briefly passed her mind, she completed her, assuming she had just slept in a difficult position.

Desperate for relief, she reserved a Uber and withdrew to a clinic in the neighborhood.

“I know they are not particularly equipped to deal with medical emergencies … but I didn’t think I had one,” the brothers said.

At the clinic, she described her symptoms to doctors and mentioned that she suspected she could be caused by a migraine.

They agreed without doing any evidence. Instead, doctors gave her a stroke of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs for pain, a recipe for some anti-nausea medicines and sent her home.

The brothers are not alone.

“Bad -Diagnosis happens 25% of the time due to failure to make a scan,” the post Christine Buckley, executive director of the Brain Aneurysm Foundation, told the post.

When the pain becomes deadly

One and a half day after hitting the pain for the first time, the brothers were lying on the bed, tortured by a ruthless headache and race thoughts.

“I don’t know if this is part of being a woman and what we deal with our bodies, but I wondered,” Are I blowing this in proportion? Am I crazy? “” She remembered.

From 1:45 am, she would have enough. Weak, dehydrated and desperate, she called another Uber – this time in the ER on Mount Sinai Morningside.

She sat in the back as the driver exploded the club’s music, the smell of his air cooler making it calm as he fought not to hold vomiting throughout the car.

When she wrapped through the hospital doors and described her symptoms, the ER staff went into immediate action. They quickly controlled its vitals, administered fluids and pain medication through an IV and hurried it for a brain scan.

The diagnosis was terrible: a torn aneurysm, roughly the size of a marble, had flowed blood into the space around its brain. She was sitting at the base of her skull, located on the wall of her rear communication artery.

A silent killer

An aneurysm of the brain is a weakened area, swollen in a brain artery. If it breaks down, the blood flows into the space between the brain and the skull, causing a dangerous blow to the life known as a subarachnoid hemorrhage, according to BAF.

About 6.8 million Americans – about 1 in 50 – are living with an unregulated brain aneurysm.

Yeardo year, 30,000 of those bombs of the time they score, or one every 18 minutes. Half of those patients die within three months. Among the survivors, two -thirds have remained with permanent brain damage for BAF.

“Also very important to be appreciated and treated quickly,” he told Dr. Christopher Kellner, a cerebrovascular neurosurgeon and director of Mount Sinai’s intracerebral hemorrhage program for posting.

When the brothers arrived at the hospital, Kellner had a mission: stop bleeding, repairing the aneurysm and managing the damage that had already been done.

“When bleeding of aneurysm, blood spreads very quickly and causes inflammation throughout the brain and arteries around the brain,” Kellner said. “This can cause seizures, increase in fluid lifting and increased pressure.”

Inflammation can even cause another stroke day later by squeezing the closed arteries and drowning blood flow.

“Although the standing clinic agreed with me that it was a migraine, I knew something was not right.”

Brothers Julie

Just three hours after calling Uber to Mount Sinai, the brothers were in operation. Kellner performed an endovascular embolism, a minimal invasive procedure in which he broke an catheter from an artery in her thigh to her brain.

Through that small tube, he threw a soft wire coil on the aneurysm, forming a clot that closed the leak and stopped bleeding.

After that, the recovery began quickly.

Two days post-op, the brothers were already sitting and standing. With physical therapy, she went down the hospital corridors, cheered by the nurses who took her with them every step.

“Even walking only a little would get tired of me,” the brothers said, adding that she was fighting with slight sensitivity, brain fog and problems focusing.

The brothers are expected to lose only a few days of work. Instead, she stayed in the hospital for three weeks – and it took three months before returning to work.

Four months after the dismissal on May 13, she ended up 5k annual BAF – with Kellner immediately next to her.

“He was suspected of seeing me,” she said.

More than a year after rupture, the brothers are living independently, traveling and returning to work full time. But the fear of health changed its perspective.

“Life is for the living,” she said. “It’s not for continuous grinding.”

Beware a “thunderclap headache”

Most brain aneurysms do not cause problems – in fact, up to 80% remain intact for a person’s whole life, according to BAF.

Unexplained aneurysms usually go unnoticed, Buckley said. But when they grow up, they can suppress the nerves and nearby tissues, which can cause symptoms like pain after an eye, vision changes, facial numbness or weakness, headaches and concentrated problems.

Most often, these aneurysms are randomly found during brain scans for unrelated issues. Most patients simply need routine monitoring to control any new growth or change.

“The risk factors for developing an aneurysm are female, with high blood pressure, have high cholesterol, smoke cigarettes and have other family members who have had aneurysms,” Kellner said.

“In the case of Julie, she is a young woman who is very healthy, and her aneurysm probably happened spontaneously,” he added.

Kellner said the brothers’ initial maldiagnosis is not an isolated event – but there are key indicators that can remove doctors and patients alike.

“When you hear that someone has had a sudden, severe headache, this is a sign to go down the path of understanding if it is an aneurysm,” he said, mentioning that this type of pain is often called “thunder headache”.

If you were sent home without any evidence such as the brothers, do not be afraid to push back.

“Although the standing clinic agreed with me that it was a migraine, I knew something was wrong,” she said. “I think the intestinal instinct is there for a reason.”