“I tried to ignore the pain and push through it, but I just couldnt.”
“Meanwhile, the painshooting, stabbing, constricting painwas getting worse,” she said.
“At some level, I knew what was happening: my brain was damaged.”
Frazer Harrison/Getty Images
I was throwing up bile."
“Id had an aneurysm,” she wrote.
“If I was to live and avoid terrible deficits, I would have to have urgent surgery.
And, even then, there were no guarantees.”
Clarke underwent a three-hour surgery in which a wire was put into one of her arteries through her groin.
It went up into her brain, where it sealed off theaneurysm.
“When I woke, the pain was unbearable.
I had no idea where I was,” she wrote.
“My field of vision was constricted.
There was a tube down my throat and I was parched and nauseated.
They moved me out of the I.C.U.
after four days and told me that the great hurdle was to make it to the two-week mark.
If I made it that long with minimal complications, my chances of a good recovery were high.”
The procedure had failed.
“This time they needed to access my brain in the old-fashioned waythrough my skull.
And the operation had to happen immediately.”
She also spent a month in the hospital recovering.
What is an aneurysm?
They can leak or rupture and cause ahemorrhagic stroke, i.e.
bleeding into the brain, theMayo Clinicsays.
Both a leaking aneurysm and a ruptured aneurysm cause sudden and severe headaches.
“It comes out of nowhere.”
How common are aneurysms in young women?
Brain aneurysms are also more common among women than men, especially postmenopausal women.
Getting diagnosed and treated ASAP increases the chances that youll make a full recovery, the NINDS says.
If you are diagnosed as having an aneurysm, youll likely need surgery.
Afterward, youll need to be monitored for the rest of your life.
“Having one aneurysm means youre at greater risk of developing another one,” Dr. Potts says.
“But even if someone has one, its very rare to develop another one.
Overall, aneurysms are incredibly serious and come with a significant risk for death or serious complications.
Clark is “definitely one of the lucky ones,” Dr. Choudhri says.
