This mother of 4 died after her migraine turned out to be something much worse

pulse

April 28, 2017 12:56 PM

Common symptoms of a ruptured aneurysm include a sudden and severe headache, dilated pupils, blurred or double vision, pain above and behind the eye, weakness, numbness, trouble walking or speaking, and a stiff neck.

brain aneurysm

When 41-year-old Lee Broadway texted complaining of the worst headache of her life, her husband Eric rushed home to care for her during what they thought was a severe migraine episode.

Hours later, she was declared dead due to complications from a ruptured brain aneurysm.

"An aneurysm is a bubble off of an artery that can rupture and cause bleeding," Johanna Fifi, M.D., assistant professor of neurosurgery, neurology, and radiology at Mount Sinai, says.

"Aneurysms are caused by a weakness in the wall of a blood vessel which cause the blood vessel to balloon outwards often in a pouch-like sac. What causes this weakness is unknown in most patients."

According to the Brain Aneurysm Foundation, common symptoms of a ruptured aneurysm include a sudden and severe headache, dilated pupils, blurred or double vision, pain above and behind the eye, weakness, numbness, trouble walking or speaking, and a stiff neck.

Eric Broadway told People that he immediately knew something was seriously wrong with Lee when he received her text because he had seen her deal with pain before.

“She was begging to have the pain go away,” he said. “As a husband, you want to protect your wife and help her, but there was nothing I could do.”

Fifi says that headaches from aneurysms usually start suddenly and patients usually describe it as the worst headache of their life.

If this happens to you, Fifi says to call 911 immediately. A brain aneurysm can cause damage in minutes.

"Doctors call it a thunderclap headache. It does not go away completely even with migraine medications.

"If the leak is large, the patient can quickly progress to lethargy then coma. If the leak is small, then headache can be the only symptom but re-bleeding can re-occur at anytime," Fifi says.

Learn more about the female anatomy:

Lee, a mother of four, underwent a seemingly successful surgery to repair the rupture, once she and her husband rushed to the ER, but she tragically died of complications from the procedure hours later.

The bottom line: If you suddenly experience a severe headache that you would categorize as the worst headache of your life, even if you're prone to migraines, get it checked out right away.

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