Woman learns to walk and talk again after life-threatening brain aneurysm

Julianne Smith was home with two of her daughters in early January when her world completely changed.
She passed out, and one of her daughters who just so happened to be home for holiday break immediately called Mike, Smith’s husband who was at work.
Once her husband called first responders, two rescue squads and police came to help. The call led to a shocking diagnosis. She had a ruptured brain aneurysm that was categorized as grade 5, one of the most severe.
“I’m told that I vomited,” said Smith, who lives in Cleveland. “I had a really bad headache.”
She doesn’t remember many of the details from that fateful day. In fact, many of her recollections are mostly secondhand accounts from her husband, her daughters and the nurses and doctors at the Cleveland Clinic who cared for her.
Her husband said she has undergone at least 12 procedures since the incident, and she has also had to undergo speech, physical and occupational therapy to regain her independence. She couldn’t drive for months and had to learn how to walk on her own again.
Now, nearly a year after the scare, Smith is back on the road and she tries to walk three miles a day.
She’s looking forward to her favorite holiday, Thanksgiving, and this year, she has “so much to be grateful for.”
After Smith passed out in January, an ambulance took her to the nearest hospital, Smith told USA TODAY on Wednesday. The hospital couldn’t do much for her though, so she was then flown to the Cleveland Clinic Main Campus. 
“Within 90 minutes, I was in my first brain surgery,” Smith said. “My brain was filling up with so much fluid and blood that they had to take part of my skull off.”
She doesn’t remember much about the procedures she has undergone, but said she recalls her husband filling her in when she came out of a medically-induced coma. 
“How did this happen to me?” she wondered. “I thought I was taking good care of myself and I had never even known anyone personally with a brain aneurysm.”
Dr. Adam Barron, a Cleveland Clinic neurointensivist (a neurology doctor who specializes in taking care of patients with brain injuries in the ICU) who treated Smith, said aneurysms are caused by a weakness in a blood vessel wall in the brain. 
According to Barron, there is a small balloon that forms on the side of the blood vessel and if it becomes weak enough, it can rupture and cause bleeding around the surface of the brain. When that bleeding happens, it’s called a subarachnoid hemorrhage.
It’s possible for people to have brain aneurysms without symptoms, he said, but when the aneurysms rupture and cause bleeding, there will be signs, he said.
According to Barron, women are at a slightly higher risk for ruptured brain aneurysms than men, and smoking can also increase the risk of having an aneurysm rupture.
Smith said that after her own brain aneurysms, one of her doctors recommended that her first-degree relatives undergo brain scans. Her youngest sister has an aneurysm in the same location of Smith’s rupture, she said, adding that both she and her sister will undergo routine scans.
She and her husband had their middle daughter checked out because she has struggled with migraines, they said. She’s 13 now and although doctors typically don’t scan children at that age, a doctor decided to OK it.
“There is a spot that they want to look at, but they don’t even think it’s anything to worry about and it’s not in the dangerous part of the brain,” her husband said.
Barron said brain aneurysms aren’t common in the general population so doctors don’t typically recommend routine scans to look for them. Doctors do recommend scans if there are significant risk factors though, he said.
Brain aneurysms are caused by genetics, so it can be hard to prevent them, he said. However, some factors that may help include refraining from smoking, as well as taking care of your blood pressure and cholesterol.
Between Jan. 5 and Feb. 14, Smith underwent at least 12 procedures to treat the brain aneurysm, according to her husband.
“Actually, most of those happened in the first five days,” he said. “It was pretty intense.”
She underwent a drain placement to treat the pressure in her skull, but days later, her brain was still swelling, so doctors removed part of her skull to make room, a spokesperson from the Cleveland Clinic said.
Doctors were able to reattach part of her skull sooner than planned because of how much the swelling in her brain had subsided, her husband said.
Immediately after the aneurysm, Smith couldn’t feel her entire left side and struggled with her memory, her husband said. She didn’t realize her daughter’s birthday had already passed, and Christmas as well.
Smith remembers what it felt like to accept that she had such a debilitating illness. Some days, she had no energy, and initially she needed help doing simple tasks like using the restroom. It was difficult to transition to relying so much on others, she said, but she didn’t let it stop her.
The Smiths spent the first few months of 2024 making sure she underwent extensive physical therapy, speech therapy and occupational therapy. The medical team that treated her helped stimulate her mind as she recovered, quizzing her.
“I was so determined to get better, and I had so many people praying for me,” she said. “I really do believe that that is where my strength came from, and that is why I’m still here. I persevered. And I had some dark days. I had some very dark days where I struggled.”
To get better, Smith would set goals that take lots of brain power, such as cooking a meal at home, planning and going grocery shopping.
“It’s all those things that I used to take for granted,” she said, noting that it was hard not being able to be as independent as she was before. She couldn’t drive for about seven months.
Barron said Smith was “as sick as you can be in the neuro ICU.” She was under heavy anesthesia and paralyzed, he told USA TODAY.
“It’s thanks to her and her family,” he said. “Working so hard through her rehabilitation to get to the point where she is today. But it’s also thanks to the multidisciplinary group at the Cleveland Clinic, all of the different doctors, the neurosurgeon, the ICU doctors, the nurses and nurse practitioners, the respiratory therapists, everyone involved.”
Smith and her husband said timing is everything. Two of their three daughters were at home on holiday break when she suffered her brain aneurysm.
“Had our two younger daughters not been home on Christmas break, I probably would not be alive today,” she told USA TODAY.
She added that she’s grateful for her neurosurgeon, Dr. Nina Moore, as well as the other doctors who cared for her this year.
“I’m just so incredibly grateful to them, to our friends and our family, and to every individual that prayed for me,” she said.
Saleen Martin is a reporter on USA TODAY’s NOW team. She is from Norfolk, Virginia – the 757. Follow her on Twitter at@SaleenMartin or email her [email protected].