Brain Aneurysm Foundation

Erin Dohan - Brain Aneurysm Survivor at 27 yrs old

We're fundraising for the Brain Aneurysm Foundation! 

OUR MISSION: To promote early detection of brain aneurysms by providing knowledge and raising awareness of the signs, symptoms and risk factors. 

Thank you for making a difference with your support! 

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Erin's story - available by book soon; I Think I'm Ready to Talk. How it all started below: 

Prologue

Wednesday, May 29, 2019: I was twenty-seven years old, celebrating a third wedding anniversary, and recovering from an amazing Memorial Day weekend with friends, when a brain aneurysm ruptured.

I have what I think are clear memories from this day. If you ask my husband, Patrick, he remembers it quite differently. So I will never feel certain about what actually happened.

I was working from home when I suddenly felt a big clap on the back of my head and what I thought was liquid dripping down my neck. In my memory, I put my hand to my neck to check for liquid and said aloud, “Well, that hurt,” then continued working. I don’t know how long I kept working until I was overcome by powerful waves of nausea. I called Patrick and managed to tell him something weird was happening. He thought it was food poisoning; I thought it was a strange delayed hangover from the long weekend in Napa with friends. He told me to lie down and rest.

I’m not usually one to take directions so literally but that day I did. After the nausea had passed enough that I was able to pull my head out of the toilet, but still lingering enough that I did not trust myself to stand up, I lay down by the toilet and took a nap on the hard, cold bathroom floor. The coldness of the floor felt soothing and I couldn’t make enough sense of my whereabouts to realize how strange a place the floor was for a nap when my bed was just a few steps away.

When I woke up, I had a handful of “happy anniversary” texts, concerned texts and missed calls from Patrick, and slacks and emails from work. I responded to all in what I thought at the time was a normal manner.

Patrick’s mom had sent a nice happy anniversary text to us; Patrick replied, “Thank you!” Hours later, in the same text chain, I responded, “You’re welcome.” Patrick quickly explained to his mom that I was not feeling well.

I went back to my home office and back to work, with a puke bucket at my side. I had one more meeting that day. I pulled myself together enough to slack that coworker, saying I wasn’t feeling well and would need to reschedule. I then began drafting a very detailed response (color-coded and elaborately formatted and full of so many broken formulas) to a client’s yes-or-no question. Thankfully I didn’t get the chance to hit send due to the next wave of pain and nausea.

I don’t know how I ended up back on the bathroom floor. But next thing I knew there I was, waking up from another odd nap, hearing knocks on the front door. I somehow knew this was help Patrick had sent, though I didn’t know who they were.

So many lucky things happened that day, starting with my amazing husband sensing that I truly needed help. Patrick was on his way home from downtown San Francisco, but we had remote locks that he was able to control via his iPhone.

The paramedics made their way in, found me lying on the bathroom floor as close to the toilet as I could get, gave me the once-over, and asked if I could walk out. I said yes. In my memory, Patrick made it home while I was walking out; he says the paramedics were carrying me. It was about 4:20 p.m.

Thankfully, the hospital staff knew exactly what tests to run the minute we entered the hospital. Several of my symptoms—a dilated pupil and turned-down smile being the most obvious—triggered the quick response. I was rushed from the ambulance directly to a CT scan.

One of my last clear memories from that day is lying in an emergency room bed after my first of many CT scans and hearing a doctor say, “Brain bleed in bed 1H.” I don’t know why, but I knew that bed 1H was me.

I was not in a hospital gown yet. I was wearing black pants and a black and white striped shirt I still own. Patrick had just arrived at the hospital after following the ambulance from home and was making his way to the side of my hospital bed to grab my hand. I remember a lot of very small details about that moment, frozen in my head like a photograph, the calm before the storm that no one could have anticipated. I did not have the capacity, as my body was fighting the strong waves of nausea, to absorb what was happening. I felt like an outside observer, weirdly calm as I just watched everyone around me while I lay in the hospital bed waiting to be told what to do and when to do it. Everything after that feels fuzzy, like I am grasping at bits and pieces of what happened and hoping I can stitch them together into something accurate.

Patrick said that the atmosphere was pretty quiet and relaxed at first—but once a doctor arrived and announced that I had a brain bleed, everything changed. Everything suddenly felt so rushed, so urgent. People began hurrying in and out. The doctor informed us that I would be rushed to the hospital an hour away with a nationally renowned neuro ward and surgeon. “Basically, it went from skepticism to high alert, and it was terrifying,” Patrick said. He remembers a helicopter was in consideration, but someone determined it would take too long to fuel, while the ambulance was waiting and ready for me to be loaded.

While the doctor was explaining this to Patrick, a nurse was shoving a hospital gown at me, pulling me out of the bed, and rushing me out of my clothes and into the gown. Another nurse was busy organizing all the monitors and cords that needed to be quickly connected to me. Another nurse was typing furiously at a computer. Everyone was doing their best to get me in that ambulance as fast as possible. Little did I know this was just the beginning of years getting all too familiar with hospitals, emergency rooms, operating rooms, and doctors. This was also the beginning of my body and health controlling what I am able to do. No matter my mindset and drive, I could only do what my body would allow before it began to fail.

One of the many medical staff crowding my little room went over the next steps with Patrick. They told him to go home and pack things that would help me be comfortable during a long hospital stay. I asked Patrick to email my work, insisting he make a very detailed email about the work I would not be able to continue. I had no idea if any of it made sense.

Then I called my mom.