But last year, she faced the biggest challenge of all: a battle to survive.<\/p>\n
At only 37, Brothers experienced a ruptured brain aneurysm that remained untreated for over 36 hours due to an initial misdiagnosis by doctors.<\/p>\n The dangerous delay put her at serious risk of a second bleed that could have resulted in irreversible brain damage, stroke or even d:eath.<\/p>\n \u201cYou know your body better than anybody else,\u201d Brothers told The Post. \u201cYou might not be able to pinpoint exactly what\u2019s going on, but if you feel like something\u2019s wrong, you\u2019re probably right.\u201d<\/p>\n Apart from her high-stress job in TV production, Brothers lived a relatively healthy lifestyle with no major medical problems.<\/p>\n \u201cBefore the aneurysm, I think a sprained ankle was probably the worst of my health issues,\u201d she said. But everything changed on the night of April 23, 2024.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve never been shot in the head, however, if I were to compare it to anything, it was that sudden,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was like something snapped inside of me.\u201d<\/p>\n She had never experienced a migraine \u2014 but she\u2019d heard the horror stories from friends and wondered whether this was her first.<\/p>\n \u201cI started to think, wow, I guess people aren\u2019t joking, because this is pretty awful,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n 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 \u2014 but by the next morning, her symptoms had only gotten worse.<\/p>\n \u201cI was vomiting and I was getting quite dehydrated because I couldn\u2019t even keep a sip of water down at that point,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cI wondered, \u2018Am I blowing this out of proportion? Am I crazy?\u2019\u201d Desperate for relief, she booked an Uber and dragged herself to a neighborhood walk-in clinic.<\/p>\n \u201cI know they\u2019re not particularly equipped to deal with medical emergencies \u2026 but I didn\u2019t think I was having one,\u201d Brothers said.<\/p>\n At the clinic, she described her symptoms to the doctors and mentioned that she suspected they might be caused by a migraine.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Brothers isn\u2019t alone.<\/p>\n \u201cMisdiagnosis occurs 25% of the time because of the failure to do a scan,\u201d Christine Buckley, executive director of the Brain Aneurysm Foundation, told The Post.<\/p>\n A day and a half after the pain first struck, Brothers was lying awake in bed, tormented by a relentless headache and racing thoughts.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know if this is part of being a woman and what we deal with with our bodies, but I wondered, \u2018Am I blowing this out of proportion? Am I crazy?\u2019\u201d she recalled.<\/p>\n By 1:45 a.m., she\u2019d had enough. Weak, dehydrated and desperate, she called another Uber \u2014 this time to the ER at Mount Sinai Morningside.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n An estimated 6.8 million Americans \u2014 about 1 in 50 \u2014 are living with an unruptured brain aneurysm.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very important to get assessed and treated quickly,\u201d Dr. Christopher Kellner, a cerebrovascular neurosurgeon and director of Mount Sinai\u2019s Intracerebral Hemorrhage program, told The Post.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen the aneurysm bleeds, the blood spreads very quickly and causes inflammation throughout the whole brain and in the arteries around the brain,\u201d Kellner said. \u201cThat can cause seizures, increased fluid buildup and increased pressure.\u201d<\/p>\n The inflammation can even trigger another stroke days later by squeezing arteries shut and choking off blood flow.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n After that, recovery kicked off fast.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cEven walking just a little bit would wear me out quite a bit,\u201d Brothers said, adding that she was also struggling with light sensitivity, brain fog and trouble focusing.<\/p>\n Brothers expected to miss only a few days of work. Instead, she stayed in the hospital for three weeks \u2014 and it took three months before she was back on the job.<\/p>\n Four months after discharge on May 13, she completed the BAF\u2019s annual 5K \u2014 with Kellner right by her side.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was floored to see me,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cLife is for the living,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s not for the constant grind.\u201d<\/p>\n Most brain aneurysms don\u2019t cause problems \u2014 in fact, up to 80% stay intact for a person\u2019s entire lifetime, according to the BAF.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cRisk 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,\u201d Kellner said.<\/p>\n \u201cIn Julie\u2019s case, she is a young woman who is very healthy, and her aneurysm probably occurred spontaneously,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Kellner said Brothers\u2019 initial misdiagnosis isn\u2019t an isolated event \u2014 but there are key indicators that could tip off doctors and patients alike.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you hear someone has had a sudden, severe headache, that\u2019s a sign to go down the route of figuring out if it\u2019s an aneurysm,\u201d he said, noting that kind of pain is often referred to as a \u201cthunderclap headache.\u201d<\/p>\n If you\u2019re sent home with no testing like Brothers was, don\u2019t be afraid to push back.<\/p>\n \u201cEven though the walk-in clinic agreed with me that it was a migraine, I knew something wasn\u2019t right,\u201d she said. \u201cI think that gut instinct is there for a reason.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Living in New York, Julie Brothers is used to facing challenges\u2014whether it\u2019s chasing her dream career, squeezing onto a crowded subway, or snagging the last slice of… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39973,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-39972","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/bunny-wp-pullzone-qbwibhia54.b-cdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Screenshot-2025-09-04-172738.png\")
Missed signs, major risk<\/strong><\/h1>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/bunny-wp-pullzone-qbwibhia54.b-cdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Screenshot-2025-09-04-172846.png\")
\nJulie Brothers<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/bunny-wp-pullzone-qbwibhia54.b-cdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Screenshot-2025-09-04-172916.png\")
<\/p>\n
\nJulie Brothers
\nHer 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.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/bunny-wp-pullzone-qbwibhia54.b-cdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Screenshot-2025-09-04-172943.png\")
\nJulie Brothers<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nWhen pain turns deadly<\/strong><\/h1>\n
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\nJulie Brothers<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nA silent killer<\/strong><\/h1>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/bunny-wp-pullzone-qbwibhia54.b-cdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Screenshot-2025-09-04-173125.png\")
\nJulie Brothers<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/bunny-wp-pullzone-qbwibhia54.b-cdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Screenshot-2025-09-04-173158.png\")
\nJulie Brothers<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/bunny-wp-pullzone-qbwibhia54.b-cdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Screenshot-2025-09-04-173236.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/bunny-wp-pullzone-qbwibhia54.b-cdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Screenshot-2025-09-04-173303.png\")
\nJulie Brothers<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/bunny-wp-pullzone-qbwibhia54.b-cdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Screenshot-2025-09-04-173352.png\")
<\/p>\nBeware a \u201cthunderclap headache\u201d<\/strong><\/h1>\n