Doctors misdiagnosed my ruptured brain aneurysm at 37

Living in New York, Julie Brothers is no stranger to a fight — whether it’s for her dream job, a spot on a packed subway or the last slice of pizza after a long day.

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

At just 37 years old, Brothers suffered a ruptured brain aneurysm that went untreated for more than 36 hours after doctors initially misdiagnosed her symptoms.

The dangerous delay put her at serious risk of a second bleed that could have resulted in irreversible brain damage, stroke or even death.

“You know your body better than anybody else,” Brothers told The Post. “You might not be able to pinpoint exactly what’s going on, but if you feel like something’s wrong, you’re probably right.”

Missed signs, major risk

Aside from her high-stress job in TV production, Brothers lived a relatively healthy lifestyle with no major medical problems.

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

Brothers was wrapping up work from home, hunched over her laptop and scarfing down takeout, when she was struck by a searing pain in the back of her head out of nowhere.

“I’ve never been shot in the head, however, if I were to compare it to anything, it was that sudden,” she said. “It was like something snapped inside of me.”

She had never experienced a migraine — but she’d heard the horror stories from friends and wondered whether this was her first.

“I started to think, wow, I guess people aren’t joking, because this is pretty awful,” she said.

Nausea, dizziness, blurred vision and a neck so stiff she could barely move followed. She managed to get a glass of water from the kitchen before collapsing into bed — but by the next morning, her symptoms had only gotten worse.

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

“I wondered, ‘Am I blowing this out of proportion? Am I crazy?’”

Julie Brothers

Her neck was still stiff. Though the thought of meningitis briefly crossed her mind, she brushed it off, assuming she had just slept in an awkward position.

Desperate for relief, she booked an Uber and dragged herself to a neighborhood walk-in clinic.

“I know they’re not particularly equipped to deal with medical emergencies … but I didn’t think I was having one,” Brothers said.

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

They agreed without running any tests. Instead, doctors gave her a shot of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs for the pain, a prescription for some anti-nausea medicine and sent her home.

Brothers isn’t alone.

“Misdiagnosis occurs 25% of the time because of the failure to do a scan,” Christine Buckley, executive director of the Brain Aneurysm Foundation, told The Post. 

When pain turns deadly

A day and a half after the pain first struck, Brothers was lying awake in bed, tormented by a relentless headache and racing thoughts.

“I don’t know if this is part of being a woman and what we deal with with our bodies, but I wondered, ‘Am I blowing this out of proportion? Am I crazy?’” she recalled.

By 1:45 a.m., she’d had enough. Weak, dehydrated and desperate, she called another Uber — this time to the ER at Mount Sinai Morningside.

She sat in the backseat as the driver blasted club music, the smell of his air freshener making her queasy as she fought to keep from vomiting all over the car.

When she staggered through the hospital doors and described her symptoms, the ER staff sprang into immediate action. They quickly checked her vitals, administered fluids and pain medication through an IV and rushed her in for a brain scan.

The diagnosis was terrifying: a ruptured aneurysm, roughly the size of a marble, had been leaking blood into the space around her brain. It was sitting at the base of her skull, lodged in the wall of her posterior communicating artery.

A silent killer

A brain aneurysm is a weakened, bulging area in a brain artery. If it ruptures, blood leaks into the space between the brain and skull, causing a life-threatening type of stroke known as a subarachnoid hemorrhage, according to the BAF.

An estimated 6.8 million Americans — about 1 in 50 — are living with an unruptured brain aneurysm.

Every year, 30,000 of those ticking time bombs explode, or one every 18 minutes. Half of those patients die within three months. Among survivors, two-thirds are left with permanent brain damage, per the BAF.

“It’s very important to get assessed and treated quickly,” Dr. Christopher Kellner, a cerebrovascular neurosurgeon and director of Mount Sinai’s Intracerebral Hemorrhage program, told The Post.

When Brothers arrived at the hospital, Kellner had one mission: stop the bleeding, repair the aneurysm and manage the damage that had already been done.

“When the aneurysm bleeds, the blood spreads very quickly and causes inflammation throughout the whole brain and in the arteries around the brain,” Kellner said. “That can cause seizures, increased fluid buildup and increased pressure.”

The inflammation can even trigger another stroke days later by squeezing arteries shut and choking off blood flow.

“Even though the walk-in clinic agreed with me that it was a migraine, I knew something wasn’t right.”

Julie Brothers

Just three hours after calling her Uber to Mount Sinai, Brothers was in surgery. Kellner performed an endovascular embolization, a minimally invasive procedure in which he threaded a catheter from an artery in her thigh up to her brain.

Through that small tube, he dropped a soft wire coil into the aneurysm, forming a clot that sealed off the leak and stopped the bleeding.

After that, recovery kicked off fast.

Two days post-op, Brothers was already sitting up and standing. With physical therapy, she trekked down hospital hallways, cheered on by nurses who high-fived her with every step.

“Even walking just a little bit would wear me out quite a bit,” Brothers said, adding that she was also struggling with light sensitivity, brain fog and trouble focusing.

Brothers expected to miss only a few days of work. Instead, she stayed in the hospital for three weeks — and it took three months before she was back on the job.

Four months after discharge on May 13, she completed the BAF’s annual 5K — with Kellner right by her side.

“He was floored to see me,” she said.

More than a year after the rupture, Brothers is living independently, traveling and back to work full-time. But the health scare changed her perspective.

“Life is for the living,” she said. “It’s not for the constant grind.”

Beware a “thunderclap headache”

Most brain aneurysms don’t cause problems — in fact, up to 80% stay intact for a person’s entire lifetime, according to the BAF.

Unruptured aneurysms usually go unnoticed, Buckley said. But when they grow, they can press on nearby nerves and tissues, which can trigger symptoms like pain behind one eye, vision changes, facial numbness or weakness, headaches and trouble concentrating.

More often, though, these aneurysms are found by accident during brain scans for unrelated issues. Most of those patients just need routine monitoring to check for any new growth or changes.

“Risk factors for developing an aneurysm are being female, having high blood pressure, having high cholesterol, smoking cigarettes and having other family members who have had aneurysms,” Kellner said. 

“In Julie’s case, she is a young woman who is very healthy, and her aneurysm probably occurred spontaneously,” he added.

Kellner said Brothers’ initial misdiagnosis isn’t an isolated event — but there are key indicators that could tip off doctors and patients alike.

“When you hear someone has had a sudden, severe headache, that’s a sign to go down the route of figuring out if it’s an aneurysm,” he said, noting that kind of pain is often referred to as a “thunderclap headache.”

If you’re sent home with no testing like Brothers was, don’t be afraid to push back.

“Even though the walk-in clinic agreed with me that it was a migraine, I knew something wasn’t right,” she said. “I think that gut instinct is there for a reason.”