Houston woman roams work all night after aneurysm, massive brain bleed

HOUSTON - A woman from Houston suffered a major stroke and aneurysm at work and ended up staying overnight at her office, not realizing what was happening to her. Her boyfriend searched everywhere for her. He finally found her the next morning and was able to get her to the hospital soon enough for surgeons to save her life.

Dionicia Elizarraras is only in her mid 30's and thought she was healthy. She had no idea what was brewing inside her brain, while at work. "For some reason, I got locked in this place and granted, I was already in and out. I wasted myself as far as letting all the bowel movements out, literally spent a whole day at the office, 13 hours straight bleeding out from my aneurysm. I did have a stroke first, then I had the aneurysm," explains Elizarraras. 

It was a Friday afternoon, and she looked forward to a night out with her boyfriend. "Then, I became loopy, and I was in and out of things. My boyfriend was constantly trying to text me, but I stopped answering his texts, so he knew that something was wrong with me," says Elizarraras.

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She says at first, her co-workers thought she was taking drugs, but they reached out to her family and her boyfriend the next day and he raced her to the hospital in Webster. They transferred her to LifeFlight and rushed her to Memorial Hermann in The Texas Medical Center. "She had presented to the hospital with a ruptured brain aneurysm, we call them a subarachnoid hemorrhage, very deadly, a very devastating disease. About a third of patients who have this don't survive and about two-thirds are left with severe disability," explains Dr. Sunil Sheth. He's an endovascular surgeon and neurologist with UTHealth Houston and Memorial Hermann and performed an emergency procedure to stop her brain bleeding.

"The first thing we have to do is make sure she's stable from the pressure in the brain. So, when these aneurysms explode, it's like a bomb going off. There's a gush of blood that escapes into the brain, into the spaces around the brain, which increases the pressure dramatically and the brain is enclosed in the skull. We do a procedure to look at all the blood vessels to figure out what ruptured," explains Dr. Sheth. It's obvious just from that statement how serious this situation is, and he is amazed by her recovery!

"She is one of the few who has done very well, and we are very fortunate that we were able to help her along the way! It required a team effort. There are the neurologists, neurosurgeons, ICU doctors, all working together, plus she herself putting in lots of effort," exclaims Dr. Sheth. 

Elizarraras had to learn how to walk, talk, and everything in between, again! She did her own rehabilitation and taught herself to do those things through serious self-talk. "Gotta walk - get up!  Gotta talk - get up, you've got to write and read, you've got to do math, because I'm an accountant," says Elizarraras. It took three months, but she did it with the support of family and friends. 

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All that time, she had another serious health concern to deal with. "She had two aneurysms that we had to address We call them mirrors. That was her case, and you can see the mirror aneurysms on either side of her brain," states Dr. Sheth. He and his team worked hard to get Elizarraras's insurance to cover the cost of another surgery and they pulled it off within six months. 

She remained very positive. That was a big impact on this too! She remained very hopeful, optimistic, she's a very tenacious person, and that drive to continue to get better made a big difference," says Dr. Sheth. "The mind is a massive, powerful thing honestly, and you've got to keep positive, you've got to keep on, because life is too short. You've got to show what you're about," says Elizarraras. She says her deep faith and belief that there's something bigger than her helped her perform her own rehab to re-learn life's skills and get back to work. 

For more information visit UT Health or Memorial Hermann