An attentive colleague and lucky medical treatment advance let her beat the odds.
Sharon Dajon had a headache and hadn't felt well most of the day. Dajon
knew she was healthy -- training for the October Marine Corps Marathon
should have put doubts aside -- so the president and managing director
of American Health Consulting wrote it off as the luck of the draw. "I just brushed it aside," she told WTVR-TV, and called in sick.
That single call saved her life. A co-worker who took it noticed
something strange about Dajon's voice and got her to treat the situation
as potentially more serious. It was. An emergency trip to the hospital
revealed a brain aneurysm.
An aneurysm is a "balloon-like bulge in an artery"
that carries oxygen-rich blood to a part of the body, according to the
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. A brain aneurysm happens in a
blood vessel in the brain. As the Mayo Clinic explains, if the brain
aneurysm leaks or ruptures, the person has a stroke, which can lead to long-term problems or death.
Most brain aneurysms don't leak or rupture and show no symptoms. They're
stealth problems and doctors usually come across them by accident.
Dajon had one: a previously-hidden brain aneurysm that suddenly
ruptured. A fifth of people with a ruptured brain aneurysm die before
they can get to the hospital, Dr. John Gaughen, a neuro interventional
surgeon with the University of Virginia Medical Center told WTVR-TV.
Luckily for Dajon, she was taken to Bon Secours St. Mary's hospital in
Richmond, Virginia. The hospital had been working with UVA Medical
Center on a new type of aneurysm treatment only approved by the FDA
since 2011.
The treatment involved a minimally invasive technique,
notes the Bon Secours website. Rather than literally opening part of
the skull to perform open brain surgery, the new technology involves a
small incision on an artery. A catheter is inserted and routed up to the
damaged vessel in the brain.
In Dajon's case, Gaughen inserted the catheter with a flow-diverter
stent, which can bypass the weakened wall of the blood vessel, into an
artery in her hip. The medical team then threaded the catheter up to the
brain and positioned the stent.
It's been six months since the procedure. "We're going to consider her
cured," Gaughen told WTVR-TV. "That the stent is going to be open, and
for all intents and purposes will be cured of this, and she can go on
and live the life she was living before."
Speaking of going on with life, after a short recovery, Dajon plans to
get back on the road to train for the Myrtle Beach Marathon on
Valentine's Day. She told the station, "I like that endorphin high."
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