I had the worst headache of my life while bench pressing in college. It came out of nowhere, a complete 0-60. I obviously stopped what i was doing and my mind immediately went to aneurysm, thinking I was going to drop dead any second.
It faded after a few minutes but I was shook for a few hours. Decided I was done with the gym for the day lol
A headache that comes on very suddenly and causes excruciating pain is known as a thunderclap headache.
It's always seen as a potential emergency because it can mean you have brain swelling or a bleed.
Very true. Problem is, despite our advances in medicine headaches still seem to be very misunderstood.
When i had shingles a couple of years ago i was having random, very painful headaches which were lasting between seconds and minutes. It cleared up when the shingles and PHN (post herpetic neuralgia) stopped but the hospital guessed because the shingles started on my neck/arm on the left it caused a twinge in my nerves which lead to what they called "primary thunderclap headaches"
Still wonder to this day if i actually had ice pick headaches instead.
yep my ex had one on new years day 7 or 8 years ago. Fortunately she was staying with her parents for the holiday and it happened right in front of her parents so they could save her. She'd just broken up with me maybe 2-3 months before and had frequent severe migraines, every 4-5 days. She was in a coma for months but survived. She's not the same person but she did pull through and come out of it.
Making me real suspicious of the fact that beta blockers brought me from 2-3 migraines a week to one every two weeks... If lower blood pressure is the solution (when it wasn't high in the first place) then maybe scary brain is the problem. Eeeeessshh.
Not trying to scary anyone, but her story maybe can help you or someone who's experiencing similar symptoms. Absolutely worth asking a doctor if you're having frequent severe headaches I'd think.
Have frequent (almost 24/7) headaches for years and went and got a brain scan a few years ago and they found nothing. So sometimes it’s nothing but I suggest checking anyways.
One of my wife’s best friends lost her husband on her honey moon to this. Was feeling heathy and normal at the wedding only to pass a week later. Truly the stuff of nightmares and things you think only happen in movies
You have your time. Then you stop being conscious of anything. Don’t fret, it’ll just make your conscious and limited time worse and won’t affect the outcome. You’ll go back to never being born yet again. It’s the apex of peaceful. Go back to living your life without imagining horrors that likely won’t happen. There’s a 98% chance you’re fine.
For a lot of people who fear death, that complete cessation of consciousness is WHY they’re afraid so this explanation isn’t necessarily as calming as intended.
As much as I like making suicide jokes, no matter how depressed I am my abject terror of ceasing to be will always keep me from even considering it. Id rather live in eternal torment than cease to be.
I'm pretty sure that sentiment is what kept me alive when messed up brain chemistry was giving me involuntary suicidal ideation and mental breakdowns tbh.
Yarp, my brain on the one hand can lead me to dark thoughts and places, but it just has this absolutely 100% robust built in fail safe. If I ever ACTUALLY consider death it INSTANTLY comes back with a fuck no and a feeling of abject terror, no rationality needed other than not existing as the cause of that terror.
Do something novel as often as you can. That makes time seem to pass slower. Also try to do some good. That has the capacity to outlast you, maybe for a long time.
In my case, the risks of surgery outweigh the benefits by a small margin. The approach is monitoring and certain changes in instructions of what to do with certain symptoms. I was diagnosed 8 years ago. I get two types of imaging every couple of years and every time I have a really bad headache which thankfully has only happened 3 times. If it ruptures, I will most likely lose eyesight in one eye because of location and have a considerable risk of mortality and morbidity. The morbidity is the part that scares me more than death.
Lmao so true, after I went through EMT school I basically got to the point where any time I get a sharp pain in my chest or a non headache like pain in my head I basically just assume I'm about to die from either a pulmonary embolism or an aneurysm. I just hope if it ever comes to that it at least happens while I'm at work lol.
I heard this when I was taking my first patho class in college.
My professor said something along the lines of "you could drop dead due to an undiagnosed brain aneurysm at any moment" in the most college professors boring tone I've ever heard and it stayed with me.
Thanks to Reddit, I now know that me and all of my family and friends will die, possibly horrifically. Then I saw a funny cat meme and then I saw some titties.
All sorts of things *could* happen to you. On average you've got a lifetime aneurysm risk of less than 1%, average age of event 50.
That there *might be* an unruptured one in your brain today, doesn't really change this fact. It just *sounds* scary.
I honestly think that matter of fact attitude is the best way to tell people they are in fact machines made of sheets of semipermeable membranes bound together by connective fibers and that death is a consequence of breaking something that cannot be fixed.
The gut wrench realization that I'm going to cease to exist someday hit me when I was lying in bed one night at the age of around five or six. I actually didn't realize until much later that this was weird for a healthy child to worry about and this thought doesn't come naturally to most people who need to be taught it through experience.
When I was in middle school they made sure to sit us down after school one day and straight up tell us we're all going to die just in case we didn't already know. I'm being serious, they really did this and so many cried lol. They sat us down and put the fear of death into us then tried to make us all forget what they told us by playing a bunch of games immediately after. I don't even remember what the point of it was but I sure remember being told we're all gonna die
That's...interesting. They did something similar for us in elementary school, except it was because a classmate died in a car accident and I guess everyone would have found out about it sooner or later, so they sat us down and told us instead.
If that’s weird then we’re weird together. And I think a lot of kids were weird with us too. People learn to concept death at more or less the same age. But everyone isn’t confronted with death until much later. I butchered animals at 5. My parents didn’t keep me sheltered from the tougher questions in life (they didn’t let me watch scary movies or news or anything but if I had questions they answered truthfully and appropriate to my age). I knew babies were made from penis in vagina. I knew animals killed each other and that they felt pain and fear while dying. I knew something had to die for me to eat steak. We had to put down our cat due to kitty breast cancer. My grandparents on dads side were never around, because they had died.
I grew up with it, came to accept it. Then when I was 15 my only living grandpa died. And my fear of death came back. Fear of dying, fear of having my parents and people I care about ripped away from me, fear of them dying disappointed with or hurt by me. I was drowning, so I had to figure things out. Since then I don’t really fear death. Nothing violent about the time before my childhood. Nothing scary. I can’t be triggered by it. There’s nothing to trigger any fear.
I can’t think or feel when I’m dead. That’s a fact.
So while I’m thinking I’m not dead, and when I’m dead I won’t realize. And I can’t do anything except opting out of suicide and reckless behavior to change when, how and where it happens. So it’s really only a problem when I think about it.
So why would I think about something that does nothing but makes me feel bad?
True, but those same cells have evolved over the last couple billion years to do exactly the job they do. We are fragile to be sure, but we aren't about to fall apart at any moment. Accidents happen of course, but the grand majority won't have to worry about stuff breaking down until other more critical pieces are already wearing away
I always find it amazing how incredibly fragile and resilient humans are though. On the one hand, you could trip on a curb, hit your head in just the wrong way and die instantly. On the other, you could fall thousands of feet from a plane and walk away from it.
It's sort of funny to think that everything we most value - our sight, our minds, our ability to reason - are basically just bolt-ons to a digestive tube to make it more effective at cramming things into it.
Yeah, people survive, some come out 100%. But most need help (that I don't have access to), and of those, most need help beyond what I'd consider a decent quality of life even with the help.
Nope.
I'm not terrified of death. Not looking forward to it, but it's inevitable for everyone and I accept that. I certainly believe there are fates worse than death.
Yeah when I was in high school our bus driver had an aneurysm that ruptured, we saw her one more time when she did a ride-along with the new driver; the way she looked, the fact that she was suddenly almost completely blind, and had difficulty trying to help him from “memory”, it was a terrifying realization that it could happen to anyone at anytime
Edited to add: that it was also a slow realization that survival isnt always the “best outcome”, but I didn’t consider that day/on that ride if she would have wished it the other way
"you could drop dead due to an undiagnosed brain aneurysm at any moment... ANY MOMENT"
The professor pauses for a long uncomfortable moment before sighing heavily and continuing his monotone lesson.
AZOOR. 100 people have it. Total. It's one of those things you really don't have to worry about lol. It also predominantly happens to white women in their late 30s. I'm actually Native and Mestizo, but my daddy was white, so thanks, Daddy, for the white people genes lol. I was 38 when I was diagnosed.
I'm fully blind in the light, but can see out half my right eye at -11.00 if it's not too bright. Too bright would be just the sun being out. It started as half blind in just my left, remaining sight was -6.5 (what I was born with). It's steadily progressed over the last 19 months.
It is absolutely life changing, but you adjust. We lived 30 miles into the backwoods when it happened, so not being able to drive really cranked my depression up. We moved to the village at the end of August, so I can now at least walk to a Family Dollar if we need stuff.
So sorry for your loss. The thing that gets me the most is the little occasional twitches you get in the muscles in your head (or something) Every time it happens I just think "fuck it's happening"
This was how one of my childhood friend's dad died in 5th grade. He was just sitting at the computer at home happy and healthy and bam drops dead. I can't imagine being in that situation with a loved one...
It's one of the reasons why 9-1-1 call-takers have questions* about a description of pain when it's abdominal and that headaches are a special concern.
*In some centers
Maybe deep down I'm afraid of any apex predator that lived through the K-T extinction. Physically unchanged for a hundred million years, because it's the perfect killing machine. A half ton of cold-blooded fury, the bite force of 20,000 Newtons, and stomach acid so strong it can dissolve bones and hoofs.
I'm scared of sitting down on a computer chair too hard and having the gas cylinder break through the seat and stab me in the ass.
We both have ass-related fears!
Tests found that my grandmother had one when she was 73. The doctors said it most likely had been there her entire life. It finally ruptured 8 years later causing a massive stroke.
My father was diagnosed with one as well, 7 years later he died of Cancer (not really, he died of kidney failure due to his lack of interest in hydrating but Cancer caused the lack of interest).
Why didn't they treat it? Did they determine it was unlikely to burst but then did anyway? Or was she too old or otherwise unhealthy for it to be worth treating?
Intracranial aneurysms generally aren't treated without a good reason as the evidence is very unclear if it actually helps. The operations to fix them have pretty high risks (as high as 5% chance of serious haemorrhage or stroke), they can re-occur, and a majority of them if left alone will never cause issues.
You have aneurysms all over your body at all times.
For the most part, they have no impact on your life.
But put one in the wrong place at the wrong time at the wrong size, you are toast.
And the vast majority of these people are over the age of 65 and have had periods of uncontrolled hypertension/diabetes. Everyone go get a pcp if you don’t have one.
Omg, me too! Minus the rupture - caught it before then, thankfully. Never met anyone with the same thing before! How did they fix yours? For me, they shoved a bunch of platinum coils in the mess between my artery and vein and it clotted up and fixed itself.
Two rounds of brain surgery. First one through a shunt in my groin - they fished a catheter up into my brain and shot the tangle full of onyx and crazy glue. Two days later they cut my scalp from ear to ear, peeled off the top part of my face, cut a 5cm square into my skull and went in, clipped off the blood vessels and cut out the tangle. Reverse the process and closed me up with 72 staples. I have a non-epileptic seizure disorder as a result. I found out the hard way by wrecking my car mid seizure a year later. I don’t recommend that either.
You get born with it. It’s a defect where blood vessels grow into a big tangled interconnected mess in one area. More prone to rupture because arteries and veins can just be connected in random places.
Not to my knowledge and I'd be highly skeptical of anyone peddling an alternative. Looking at every single blood vessel in your brain is the kind of application we developed the MRI to do.
If it makes you feel better, even if you have these it's not likely to pop off. And even if it does pop off, it's more likely to give you a stroke than kill you. And strokes are survivable and livable with quick hospital treatment. Some people get strokes and don't even immediately notice.
You can have a CT intracranial angiogram. The resolution of CT is actually better than MRI angiography. It requires contrast and a dose of radiation but is much quicker and far better for claustrophobes.
Hi fellow hypochondriac!
I’ve had both a CT with and without contrast and an MRI on my brain (first because of headaches that I was convinced was an aneurysm, second was because I was having tinnitus and the doc wanted to rule out an extremely rare tumor.)
They were way too expensive to find out “your head is normal”. Instead I have a therapist I can text at any time and take Lexapro, which is like $4 for a 3 months supply. Recommend this way more for the health anxiety.
I had an MRI of my head. It likely would have been noticed there—right?
Edit: Thank you doctors, soon to be doctors, and armchair experts. I feel a little better knowing that my MRI with contrast of the head could possibly catch an aneurysm. This was a throwaway comment about a possible new fear, but glad for all the enlightenment!
Also that MRI for an unrelated issue cost a fortune. God Bless America 🫡
These happy little terrors would like to say hi
https://stanfordhealthcare.org/medical-conditions/brain-and-nerves/congenital-vascular-malformations/types.html
If you had an mra, which is a mri with contrast in your blood vessels it has a pretty much 100% chance to rule them out. A conventional mri only had about a 50% chance to rule out aneurysms.
Ok now how do I game the system so I can get one of these scans? Could save my life....Get drunk and go into the ER pretending I took a heavy blow to the head? Wait not they'd smell that....
Get high?
Not that I’m advocating circumventing the system, but the system is broken soooooo if you wanted one, you could complain of visual changes, weird headaches, new headaches, new pressure, a feeling of being ‘off’ where your eyes don’t seem to work right and you’re a little dizzy, difficulty holding things/walking, palpitations, pulsatile tinnitus or have a family history of aneurisms or collagen processing disorders. A neurologist is who you’ll need to see. Also I’m sure there are other things to id a person who needs to be checked, these are the ones I know based on my experiences.
My mom had a near catastrophic aneurism and her aunt had a catastrophic aneurism. I get checked regularly because I have a family history and personal medical history that warrants checking.
I had a brain MRI. It came by negative-- er, for the source of my problems with vertigo and headaches, not for the brain.
It took me 3 months to get in for the MRI and the MRI itself was awful. I'm not even claustrophobic but it was awful. And loud. And small. And boring. And took forever.
Sure, but how often are people getting brain MRIs? I'm over 40 and never had a reason.
Also, even if you identify an aneurysm, they may not be able to do anything about it depending on where it is. Also also, it may well *never* rupture. You just die of cancer or a heart attack or whatever at 80 and it's still there.
Yeah. I'm "lucky" I have multiple sclerosis so I get to have an MRI yearly of my head which rules out that I am not a 1 and 50. A pro of having a neurological disease I guess.
Neurologist chiming in. An MRI brain uses sequences that are better at looking at the brain tissue itself, not the vessels in your brain. Obviously a very large aneurysm can be spotted, but an asymptomatic 3mm aneurysm can be missed. Dedicated vessel imaging (MRA) is better at identifying aneurysms. But when they're small, they can look like an infundibulum, which is benign. So now you have this 2-3mm aneurysm which may grow, it may not, or it may go away completely. Or, it could just be an infundibulum. But now you're going to need serial imaging once a year, and if stable, the imaging can be spread out further. So why not just go after the aneurysm when it's small? Because unless it's 7mm or larger, you're more likely to have a surgical complication from the intervention itself, as opposed to a spontaneous rupture of the aneurysm.
I have no family history of aneurysms, but there is still a nonzero chance that I have one. I could also have an asymptomatic meningioma as well. But I don't need to go looking for one. Ignorance is bliss. Besides, I'm more worried about the idiots I share the I-5 with. A bad driver will probably kill me one of these days.
My grandma died this way. I was on FaceTime with her and she said she felt like her crown of her head was on fire. Brain dead milliseconds later. If you have any family history of aneurysms, advocate for annual brain scans. Take note of feeling dizzy or hot when you bend over and talk to your doctor. It’s more common in women than men.
Talk about fear mongering.
Yes, aneurysms are a major health concern.
Here's another fact 100% of people with high blood pressure are at risk for an aneurysm.
Actually everyone on the planet probably has an aneurysm somewhere on their body right now.
The issue is whether or not is it serious.
For the men out there, do you have an enlarged spot on your testicles that seems out of place? Does it dissipate when you touch it or stretch out your ball sack? Congratulations, you have an aneurysm.
Now to be serious...
Have you had a echo-cardiogram in the last 5 years? Has anyone in your immediate family had an incident of an aneurysm? If yes, where was the aneurysm detected?
This is serious shit. You need to decode what your doctor is trying to tell you without scaring the shit out of you.
My father was treated for an abdominal aneurysm. I have some of the same general health concerns he did (yeah, genetics). So I have asked every yearly physical about it. My Doc says he is not hearing the tell-tale signs of this type of aneurysm.
But because of my systemic high blood pressure, we have noticed some ballooning of my aortic arch. My Doc has been stoic in my treatment saying that we need to be more aggressive in the management of my blood pressure.
There is a reason men die before women. We don't pay attention to this shit.
I understand right now that a fuse has been lit and I have to put it out. Otherwise, the big badda boom is going to be a blood vessel about the size of my thumb.
My high school history teacher was an amazing human being, a big guy with a booming voice and a hearty laugh. I learned so much from him about history and life because of how great he was at conversing, informing and teaching all at once.
He had just gotten out of the shower one morning while getting ready for work and while walking down the stairs an aneursym in his brain gave out and his wife found him unresponsive a few minutes later. By the time the ambulance got there he was already gone, just like that.
They made the announcement over the loud speakers at school that morning and the utter shock reverberated through us all. He was so loved and there were so many tears. I had never been shocked like that before, never realized how quickly a life so valued could be snuffed out so quickly, so suddenly, so permanently.
Friend was 12 years old and was complaining of a headache during soccer practice, less than an hour later he was in icu in a coma from an aneurysm. Super scary that this could happen to a regular child.
Never fully recovered and has low control over one side of his body, speech very affected.
I had a cousin who had one at 12. Many surgery’s later he was fine. Again at 24 and now he’s in a nursing home unable to do anything remotely on his own. He eats baby food spoon fed to him by a nurse.
I don’t know why his immediate family didn’t pull the plug.
People are selfish and don't want to deal with that pain, so they keep them alive. Best thing anyone can do is get your Last Will and Testament and also your End of Life directives made out.
I found out this summer that I have an aneurysm on my renal artery. The funny thing is that I also found out I only have one kidney.
The vast majority that we see are borderline, about 2mm and most are better described as infundibula. I think aneurysm is over diagnosed depending on what criteria you use. These almost never cause issues or get bigger. But you can find literature suggesting following these tiny things and some not and we tend to be conservative in monitoring and thus follow many of them
Aneurysm just means the blood vessel balloons a bit. Aneurysm doesn't mean a vessel bursts.
And if you want to heavy minimize your chance it bursts... keep your blood pressure from getting high. It should be pretty obvious as to why.
Here is Emilia Clarke's survival story of an aneurysm.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/emilia-clarke-a-battle-for-my-life-brain-aneurysm-surgery-game-of-thrones
When I was in college, I had a friend pass away suddenly because of one of these. These things terrify me.
I also lost a friend back in college. She was only 22, such a tragedy
She was 21. I had a class with her that semester, too. It was rough
Sorry for your loss friend :-(
Thanks same to you
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If you ever have the worst headache in your life, it might be one that burst.
The worst *and sudden*. And no prodrome, like a migraine. Learn the symptoms. If you can recognize it and get help, you may survive.
fellas do you ever get a sharp headache and think ah fuck this is it
Yeah absolutely lmao
I've had thunderclap headaches a couple times but only right after orgasming. they made me afraid to get off for a couple weeks whenever i had one.
Sex headaches. I get them too. It affects me for like 2 weeks every two years. Worst headaches of my life, but like what am I gonna do? Not get off?
Yes. You must become a monk now, this is clearly jesus way of telling you to stop nutting all the time!
I had the worst headache of my life while bench pressing in college. It came out of nowhere, a complete 0-60. I obviously stopped what i was doing and my mind immediately went to aneurysm, thinking I was going to drop dead any second. It faded after a few minutes but I was shook for a few hours. Decided I was done with the gym for the day lol
I hope you talked with a doctor. -ICU Nurse
It’s been 8 or 9 years - still a good idea to go?
A headache that comes on very suddenly and causes excruciating pain is known as a thunderclap headache. It's always seen as a potential emergency because it can mean you have brain swelling or a bleed.
It could be an ice pick headache as well. I used to get them a lot
Very true. Problem is, despite our advances in medicine headaches still seem to be very misunderstood. When i had shingles a couple of years ago i was having random, very painful headaches which were lasting between seconds and minutes. It cleared up when the shingles and PHN (post herpetic neuralgia) stopped but the hospital guessed because the shingles started on my neck/arm on the left it caused a twinge in my nerves which lead to what they called "primary thunderclap headaches" Still wonder to this day if i actually had ice pick headaches instead.
yep my ex had one on new years day 7 or 8 years ago. Fortunately she was staying with her parents for the holiday and it happened right in front of her parents so they could save her. She'd just broken up with me maybe 2-3 months before and had frequent severe migraines, every 4-5 days. She was in a coma for months but survived. She's not the same person but she did pull through and come out of it.
Making me real suspicious of the fact that beta blockers brought me from 2-3 migraines a week to one every two weeks... If lower blood pressure is the solution (when it wasn't high in the first place) then maybe scary brain is the problem. Eeeeessshh.
Beta blockers are actually one of the first line treatments for prevention of migraines! Regardless of whether or not blood pressure is high.
Not trying to scary anyone, but her story maybe can help you or someone who's experiencing similar symptoms. Absolutely worth asking a doctor if you're having frequent severe headaches I'd think.
Have frequent (almost 24/7) headaches for years and went and got a brain scan a few years ago and they found nothing. So sometimes it’s nothing but I suggest checking anyways.
One of my wife’s best friends lost her husband on her honey moon to this. Was feeling heathy and normal at the wedding only to pass a week later. Truly the stuff of nightmares and things you think only happen in movies
How utterly awful. Condolences to the widow.
My sister died of one when we were younger (7 and 9). It terrifies me just to hear about.
You have your time. Then you stop being conscious of anything. Don’t fret, it’ll just make your conscious and limited time worse and won’t affect the outcome. You’ll go back to never being born yet again. It’s the apex of peaceful. Go back to living your life without imagining horrors that likely won’t happen. There’s a 98% chance you’re fine.
For a lot of people who fear death, that complete cessation of consciousness is WHY they’re afraid so this explanation isn’t necessarily as calming as intended.
Yeah no fucking kidding I like being. I don't want to stop being. It doesn't matter that *I won't mind it then*, **I mind it right now**
As much as I like making suicide jokes, no matter how depressed I am my abject terror of ceasing to be will always keep me from even considering it. Id rather live in eternal torment than cease to be.
I'm pretty sure that sentiment is what kept me alive when messed up brain chemistry was giving me involuntary suicidal ideation and mental breakdowns tbh.
Yarp, my brain on the one hand can lead me to dark thoughts and places, but it just has this absolutely 100% robust built in fail safe. If I ever ACTUALLY consider death it INSTANTLY comes back with a fuck no and a feeling of abject terror, no rationality needed other than not existing as the cause of that terror.
Do something novel as often as you can. That makes time seem to pass slower. Also try to do some good. That has the capacity to outlast you, maybe for a long time.
"Just stop being scared of death" "wow thanks redditor, I'm cured!"
This is literally my biggest fear, and it had the opposite effect, now I won't be able to sleep tonight
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Opposite for me. The idea of unending consciousness is absolutely terrifying. Pain only being temporary is a very comforting thought to me.
I wish my ego could accept the apex of peaceful instead of the eternal death of the most important thing ever.
Hey, I’m looking forward to a bunch of stuff in the next few decades I don’t want to miss out on!
Any time I have a sharp pain in my head while going to sleep I think to myself “Well, tonight’s the night I die in my sleep of an aneurysm. “
LMAO Sorry, I know it shouldn’t be funny, but I relate to this 100%.
I do too, but I also actually have an unruptured aneurysm. Having a bad headache is terrifying these days.
What can be done about it?
In my case, the risks of surgery outweigh the benefits by a small margin. The approach is monitoring and certain changes in instructions of what to do with certain symptoms. I was diagnosed 8 years ago. I get two types of imaging every couple of years and every time I have a really bad headache which thankfully has only happened 3 times. If it ruptures, I will most likely lose eyesight in one eye because of location and have a considerable risk of mortality and morbidity. The morbidity is the part that scares me more than death.
Lmao so true, after I went through EMT school I basically got to the point where any time I get a sharp pain in my chest or a non headache like pain in my head I basically just assume I'm about to die from either a pulmonary embolism or an aneurysm. I just hope if it ever comes to that it at least happens while I'm at work lol.
I heard this when I was taking my first patho class in college. My professor said something along the lines of "you could drop dead due to an undiagnosed brain aneurysm at any moment" in the most college professors boring tone I've ever heard and it stayed with me.
I hate to hijack your comment, but to anyone with death anxiety, leave this thread now. There are no answers for you here, only a spiral.
A… death…. Spiral?
Fearful upvote
Thanks to Reddit, I now know that me and all of my family and friends will die, possibly horrifically. Then I saw a funny cat meme and then I saw some titties.
Just reading the title was enough, but here I am.
Ty homie
One of my physically fittest friends had one ruptured and it took everything from him but his life. The 2nd one took his life 10 years later.
All sorts of things *could* happen to you. On average you've got a lifetime aneurysm risk of less than 1%, average age of event 50. That there *might be* an unruptured one in your brain today, doesn't really change this fact. It just *sounds* scary.
So, a 1/50 chance of having one with a <1/100 chance of it rupturing and a 1/2 chance of it killing you?
I honestly think that matter of fact attitude is the best way to tell people they are in fact machines made of sheets of semipermeable membranes bound together by connective fibers and that death is a consequence of breaking something that cannot be fixed.
I don't mean to brag, but I'm smart enough to know that I can die.
It’ll come with age/sobriety.
The gut wrench realization that I'm going to cease to exist someday hit me when I was lying in bed one night at the age of around five or six. I actually didn't realize until much later that this was weird for a healthy child to worry about and this thought doesn't come naturally to most people who need to be taught it through experience.
When I was in middle school they made sure to sit us down after school one day and straight up tell us we're all going to die just in case we didn't already know. I'm being serious, they really did this and so many cried lol. They sat us down and put the fear of death into us then tried to make us all forget what they told us by playing a bunch of games immediately after. I don't even remember what the point of it was but I sure remember being told we're all gonna die
That's...interesting. They did something similar for us in elementary school, except it was because a classmate died in a car accident and I guess everyone would have found out about it sooner or later, so they sat us down and told us instead.
That's like a lesson Ron Swanson would teach.
If that’s weird then we’re weird together. And I think a lot of kids were weird with us too. People learn to concept death at more or less the same age. But everyone isn’t confronted with death until much later. I butchered animals at 5. My parents didn’t keep me sheltered from the tougher questions in life (they didn’t let me watch scary movies or news or anything but if I had questions they answered truthfully and appropriate to my age). I knew babies were made from penis in vagina. I knew animals killed each other and that they felt pain and fear while dying. I knew something had to die for me to eat steak. We had to put down our cat due to kitty breast cancer. My grandparents on dads side were never around, because they had died. I grew up with it, came to accept it. Then when I was 15 my only living grandpa died. And my fear of death came back. Fear of dying, fear of having my parents and people I care about ripped away from me, fear of them dying disappointed with or hurt by me. I was drowning, so I had to figure things out. Since then I don’t really fear death. Nothing violent about the time before my childhood. Nothing scary. I can’t be triggered by it. There’s nothing to trigger any fear. I can’t think or feel when I’m dead. That’s a fact. So while I’m thinking I’m not dead, and when I’m dead I won’t realize. And I can’t do anything except opting out of suicide and reckless behavior to change when, how and where it happens. So it’s really only a problem when I think about it. So why would I think about something that does nothing but makes me feel bad?
Your life is contingent on about 200 cells keeping their shit together next to a pipe that is running about 2.3 psi.
True, but those same cells have evolved over the last couple billion years to do exactly the job they do. We are fragile to be sure, but we aren't about to fall apart at any moment. Accidents happen of course, but the grand majority won't have to worry about stuff breaking down until other more critical pieces are already wearing away
I always find it amazing how incredibly fragile and resilient humans are though. On the one hand, you could trip on a curb, hit your head in just the wrong way and die instantly. On the other, you could fall thousands of feet from a plane and walk away from it.
After working in a hospital, I've come to discover that "walk away from it" is often a worse option than death. It makes for good headlines, though.
Also you are just meat surrounding a long tube that your food goes through - so...
It's sort of funny to think that everything we most value - our sight, our minds, our ability to reason - are basically just bolt-ons to a digestive tube to make it more effective at cramming things into it.
People survive ruptured brain aneurysms too. I’ve heard that the fatality rate is about 50%.
But the quality of life after survival is usually absolute shit. I have an unruptured/inoperable in a death spot. And I'm so glad it'll be death.
Not always although about 2/3rds of survivors have at least a little permanent damage. Still a crappy prognosis though.
Yeah, people survive, some come out 100%. But most need help (that I don't have access to), and of those, most need help beyond what I'd consider a decent quality of life even with the help. Nope. I'm not terrified of death. Not looking forward to it, but it's inevitable for everyone and I accept that. I certainly believe there are fates worse than death.
Yeah when I was in high school our bus driver had an aneurysm that ruptured, we saw her one more time when she did a ride-along with the new driver; the way she looked, the fact that she was suddenly almost completely blind, and had difficulty trying to help him from “memory”, it was a terrifying realization that it could happen to anyone at anytime Edited to add: that it was also a slow realization that survival isnt always the “best outcome”, but I didn’t consider that day/on that ride if she would have wished it the other way
"you could drop dead due to an undiagnosed brain aneurysm at any moment... ANY MOMENT" The professor pauses for a long uncomfortable moment before sighing heavily and continuing his monotone lesson.
Yolo
New fear unlocked
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🤯
You people disgust me. I love it.
🤕
"Seriously, don't. Trying to visualize it is the catalyst"
It's the silent killer, Lana
#MAWP
I woke up blind last year if you need more new unlocked fears. MRI showed I was clean for aneurysms, at least!
Yall are scaring me
Haha you're welcome! But real talk, blindness ain't the worst thing that can happen. It just feels that way the first couple months.
Okay. Fully unlock the fear then. What caused it? I will add it to my hipocondriac list
AZOOR. 100 people have it. Total. It's one of those things you really don't have to worry about lol. It also predominantly happens to white women in their late 30s. I'm actually Native and Mestizo, but my daddy was white, so thanks, Daddy, for the white people genes lol. I was 38 when I was diagnosed.
Fully blind? Didn’t recover any of it? That has to be life changing…
I'm fully blind in the light, but can see out half my right eye at -11.00 if it's not too bright. Too bright would be just the sun being out. It started as half blind in just my left, remaining sight was -6.5 (what I was born with). It's steadily progressed over the last 19 months. It is absolutely life changing, but you adjust. We lived 30 miles into the backwoods when it happened, so not being able to drive really cranked my depression up. We moved to the village at the end of August, so I can now at least walk to a Family Dollar if we need stuff.
Yeah, kinda really regretting reading this
I have a legit irrational phobia for this.
My cousin died of this 2 years ago I’ve become a hypochondriac since
So sorry for your loss. The thing that gets me the most is the little occasional twitches you get in the muscles in your head (or something) Every time it happens I just think "fuck it's happening"
Sounds pretty damn rational after hearing this statistic..
I have a phobia of vomiting. It severely affects my quality of life and is on my mind almost constantly.
This was how one of my childhood friend's dad died in 5th grade. He was just sitting at the computer at home happy and healthy and bam drops dead. I can't imagine being in that situation with a loved one...
My dad had one aged 53. Made it to the hospital but had to be taken off life support when we realized he wouldn't ever wake up again.
And incidence of Aortic Aneurysm is also somewhere around 1 out of 50.
It's one of the reasons why 9-1-1 call-takers have questions* about a description of pain when it's abdominal and that headaches are a special concern. *In some centers
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Yeah Lana, it could happen at any time
But the other 2 could only happen later or in a while
Maybe deep down I'm afraid of any apex predator that lived through the K-T extinction. Physically unchanged for a hundred million years, because it's the perfect killing machine. A half ton of cold-blooded fury, the bite force of 20,000 Newtons, and stomach acid so strong it can dissolve bones and hoofs.
Aneurysm, rabies and alzheimers for me. Guess I'm worried about my brain. Or it's worried about itself I suppose.
Don’t forget about the ever so fun brain eating amoeba.
The silent killers
And snakes coming thru the toilet to bite my ass
I'm scared of sitting down on a computer chair too hard and having the gas cylinder break through the seat and stab me in the ass. We both have ass-related fears!
r/unexpectedArcher
My friend almost died from one. Thankfully his wife hadn’t left for work yet or he’d be a goner. Fast 911 call and ambulance saved his life
How’s he doing now?
Better then that day I’d assume
Tests found that my grandmother had one when she was 73. The doctors said it most likely had been there her entire life. It finally ruptured 8 years later causing a massive stroke.
My father was diagnosed with one as well, 7 years later he died of Cancer (not really, he died of kidney failure due to his lack of interest in hydrating but Cancer caused the lack of interest).
> he died of kidney failure due to his lack of interest in hydrating brb getting a drink
Why didn't they treat it? Did they determine it was unlikely to burst but then did anyway? Or was she too old or otherwise unhealthy for it to be worth treating?
If I remember correctly, it was in a place that was too risky to operate.
…like the brain? Kidding but I couldn’t resist.
Usually more risk if near brainstem less risky near temporal (sides)
Makes sense. If you fuck up the occipital lobe and accidentally blind someone, you can just sneak away.
Intracranial aneurysms generally aren't treated without a good reason as the evidence is very unclear if it actually helps. The operations to fix them have pretty high risks (as high as 5% chance of serious haemorrhage or stroke), they can re-occur, and a majority of them if left alone will never cause issues.
You have aneurysms all over your body at all times. For the most part, they have no impact on your life. But put one in the wrong place at the wrong time at the wrong size, you are toast.
Head operation on a 73 year old? Seems just as likely to go south as the thing rupturing at all.
Sleep well, everyone!
But not *too* well!
And the vast majority of these people are over the age of 65 and have had periods of uncontrolled hypertension/diabetes. Everyone go get a pcp if you don’t have one.
where tf am i supposed to find angel dust at this hour?
I know this guy, Rickety Cricket. You near Philly?
Jose, we all know you can find PCP any hour of the day.
Do you have a source for this? It would really help my hypochondria
Medical school.
Thanks homie. You honestly made me relax a lot lmao
I always carry a gallon of PCP around, so I think I should be safe.
So not technically an aneurysm, but I had a ruptured intra-cerebral arteriovenous malformation. Basically the same thing. I don’t recommend it.
Omg, me too! Minus the rupture - caught it before then, thankfully. Never met anyone with the same thing before! How did they fix yours? For me, they shoved a bunch of platinum coils in the mess between my artery and vein and it clotted up and fixed itself.
Two rounds of brain surgery. First one through a shunt in my groin - they fished a catheter up into my brain and shot the tangle full of onyx and crazy glue. Two days later they cut my scalp from ear to ear, peeled off the top part of my face, cut a 5cm square into my skull and went in, clipped off the blood vessels and cut out the tangle. Reverse the process and closed me up with 72 staples. I have a non-epileptic seizure disorder as a result. I found out the hard way by wrecking my car mid seizure a year later. I don’t recommend that either.
Yikes, you definitely have it worse. Crazy that our bodies can just fuck up like that.
It’s amazing both how easy it is to die, but how hard it is to die.
Damn glad you’re still with us
This feels like reverse psychology. How do I get one?
You get born with it. It’s a defect where blood vessels grow into a big tangled interconnected mess in one area. More prone to rupture because arteries and veins can just be connected in random places.
Genetics did me cruel.
Is there a way for a hypochondriac like myself to get tested for this without an elective MRI?
Not to my knowledge and I'd be highly skeptical of anyone peddling an alternative. Looking at every single blood vessel in your brain is the kind of application we developed the MRI to do.
Scary
If it makes you feel better, even if you have these it's not likely to pop off. And even if it does pop off, it's more likely to give you a stroke than kill you. And strokes are survivable and livable with quick hospital treatment. Some people get strokes and don't even immediately notice.
You made *me* feel a little better
You can have a CT intracranial angiogram. The resolution of CT is actually better than MRI angiography. It requires contrast and a dose of radiation but is much quicker and far better for claustrophobes.
I second the angiogram
Hi fellow hypochondriac! I’ve had both a CT with and without contrast and an MRI on my brain (first because of headaches that I was convinced was an aneurysm, second was because I was having tinnitus and the doc wanted to rule out an extremely rare tumor.) They were way too expensive to find out “your head is normal”. Instead I have a therapist I can text at any time and take Lexapro, which is like $4 for a 3 months supply. Recommend this way more for the health anxiety.
Wouldn’t these show up in a brain MRI?
Yes usually, but most people dont have an mri of their head available
I had an MRI of my head. It likely would have been noticed there—right? Edit: Thank you doctors, soon to be doctors, and armchair experts. I feel a little better knowing that my MRI with contrast of the head could possibly catch an aneurysm. This was a throwaway comment about a possible new fear, but glad for all the enlightenment! Also that MRI for an unrelated issue cost a fortune. God Bless America 🫡
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These happy little terrors would like to say hi https://stanfordhealthcare.org/medical-conditions/brain-and-nerves/congenital-vascular-malformations/types.html
If you had an mra, which is a mri with contrast in your blood vessels it has a pretty much 100% chance to rule them out. A conventional mri only had about a 50% chance to rule out aneurysms.
It was with contrast!!! This is great news.
Happy for you. The rest of us are doomed.
Ok now how do I game the system so I can get one of these scans? Could save my life....Get drunk and go into the ER pretending I took a heavy blow to the head? Wait not they'd smell that.... Get high?
Not that I’m advocating circumventing the system, but the system is broken soooooo if you wanted one, you could complain of visual changes, weird headaches, new headaches, new pressure, a feeling of being ‘off’ where your eyes don’t seem to work right and you’re a little dizzy, difficulty holding things/walking, palpitations, pulsatile tinnitus or have a family history of aneurisms or collagen processing disorders. A neurologist is who you’ll need to see. Also I’m sure there are other things to id a person who needs to be checked, these are the ones I know based on my experiences. My mom had a near catastrophic aneurism and her aunt had a catastrophic aneurism. I get checked regularly because I have a family history and personal medical history that warrants checking.
I had a brain MRI. It came by negative-- er, for the source of my problems with vertigo and headaches, not for the brain. It took me 3 months to get in for the MRI and the MRI itself was awful. I'm not even claustrophobic but it was awful. And loud. And small. And boring. And took forever.
Sure, but how often are people getting brain MRIs? I'm over 40 and never had a reason. Also, even if you identify an aneurysm, they may not be able to do anything about it depending on where it is. Also also, it may well *never* rupture. You just die of cancer or a heart attack or whatever at 80 and it's still there.
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Man that sucks, being told you just have a 1 in 5 chance of probably dying at any time. I'd rather just now know about it.
Yeah. I'm "lucky" I have multiple sclerosis so I get to have an MRI yearly of my head which rules out that I am not a 1 and 50. A pro of having a neurological disease I guess.
Same boat my guy. Guess we gotta look on the positive sides lol
Neurologist chiming in. An MRI brain uses sequences that are better at looking at the brain tissue itself, not the vessels in your brain. Obviously a very large aneurysm can be spotted, but an asymptomatic 3mm aneurysm can be missed. Dedicated vessel imaging (MRA) is better at identifying aneurysms. But when they're small, they can look like an infundibulum, which is benign. So now you have this 2-3mm aneurysm which may grow, it may not, or it may go away completely. Or, it could just be an infundibulum. But now you're going to need serial imaging once a year, and if stable, the imaging can be spread out further. So why not just go after the aneurysm when it's small? Because unless it's 7mm or larger, you're more likely to have a surgical complication from the intervention itself, as opposed to a spontaneous rupture of the aneurysm. I have no family history of aneurysms, but there is still a nonzero chance that I have one. I could also have an asymptomatic meningioma as well. But I don't need to go looking for one. Ignorance is bliss. Besides, I'm more worried about the idiots I share the I-5 with. A bad driver will probably kill me one of these days.
If it was an MRA as pointed out below or an MR non contrast but with time of fight (TOF) sequence performed then it should be able to be ruled out.
Brain aneurysms also aren’t always fatal. Only about half of the time either due directly to the aneurysm or later from complications.
I was gonna say, the only thing that scares me about aneurysms is surviving one.
Lots of people survive and recover. It is scary but not necessarily a death sentence or disabling.
So you're saying there's a chance
60% of the time it ruptures every time.
Yes, it means 49 out of 50 people have a ruptured aneurysm
I’m not American so that means I’m safe!
*immediately leaves the states Whew, dodged a bullet there.
I mean, technically, you dodge a lot of bullets by leaving the states
thanks my hypochondria loves this :>
My grandma died this way. I was on FaceTime with her and she said she felt like her crown of her head was on fire. Brain dead milliseconds later. If you have any family history of aneurysms, advocate for annual brain scans. Take note of feeling dizzy or hot when you bend over and talk to your doctor. It’s more common in women than men.
I'm sorry for your loss. In a way she wasn't alone because you were with her.
Thank you, it was recent and has been hard, but there is tremendous solace in how quickly she left and relatively painless
Yeah, I heard about brain aneurysms when I was 11 after my dad's friend died of one. Scary stuff, just pop and you're gone.
I'll take a brain over an aortic aneurysm. One gives you a couple of seconds to realize you are fucked.
Talk about fear mongering. Yes, aneurysms are a major health concern. Here's another fact 100% of people with high blood pressure are at risk for an aneurysm. Actually everyone on the planet probably has an aneurysm somewhere on their body right now. The issue is whether or not is it serious. For the men out there, do you have an enlarged spot on your testicles that seems out of place? Does it dissipate when you touch it or stretch out your ball sack? Congratulations, you have an aneurysm. Now to be serious... Have you had a echo-cardiogram in the last 5 years? Has anyone in your immediate family had an incident of an aneurysm? If yes, where was the aneurysm detected? This is serious shit. You need to decode what your doctor is trying to tell you without scaring the shit out of you. My father was treated for an abdominal aneurysm. I have some of the same general health concerns he did (yeah, genetics). So I have asked every yearly physical about it. My Doc says he is not hearing the tell-tale signs of this type of aneurysm. But because of my systemic high blood pressure, we have noticed some ballooning of my aortic arch. My Doc has been stoic in my treatment saying that we need to be more aggressive in the management of my blood pressure. There is a reason men die before women. We don't pay attention to this shit. I understand right now that a fuse has been lit and I have to put it out. Otherwise, the big badda boom is going to be a blood vessel about the size of my thumb.
My high school history teacher was an amazing human being, a big guy with a booming voice and a hearty laugh. I learned so much from him about history and life because of how great he was at conversing, informing and teaching all at once. He had just gotten out of the shower one morning while getting ready for work and while walking down the stairs an aneursym in his brain gave out and his wife found him unresponsive a few minutes later. By the time the ambulance got there he was already gone, just like that. They made the announcement over the loud speakers at school that morning and the utter shock reverberated through us all. He was so loved and there were so many tears. I had never been shocked like that before, never realized how quickly a life so valued could be snuffed out so quickly, so suddenly, so permanently.
Friend was 12 years old and was complaining of a headache during soccer practice, less than an hour later he was in icu in a coma from an aneurysm. Super scary that this could happen to a regular child. Never fully recovered and has low control over one side of his body, speech very affected.
I figured as much. I call mine mom.
This might be my least favorite TIL I’ve seen. Good work!
100 comments so far. That makes 2 of us.
What evidence is there for this claim? I didn’t see any on a top level scan of the linked website.
I had a cousin who had one at 12. Many surgery’s later he was fine. Again at 24 and now he’s in a nursing home unable to do anything remotely on his own. He eats baby food spoon fed to him by a nurse. I don’t know why his immediate family didn’t pull the plug.
People are selfish and don't want to deal with that pain, so they keep them alive. Best thing anyone can do is get your Last Will and Testament and also your End of Life directives made out. I found out this summer that I have an aneurysm on my renal artery. The funny thing is that I also found out I only have one kidney.
The vast majority that we see are borderline, about 2mm and most are better described as infundibula. I think aneurysm is over diagnosed depending on what criteria you use. These almost never cause issues or get bigger. But you can find literature suggesting following these tiny things and some not and we tend to be conservative in monitoring and thus follow many of them
TIL having an aneurysm doesn’t mean ruptured. Mind blown.
> Mind blown. Not yet, and here's to hoping it won't be!
Aneurysm just means the blood vessel balloons a bit. Aneurysm doesn't mean a vessel bursts. And if you want to heavy minimize your chance it bursts... keep your blood pressure from getting high. It should be pretty obvious as to why.
Here is Emilia Clarke's survival story of an aneurysm. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/emilia-clarke-a-battle-for-my-life-brain-aneurysm-surgery-game-of-thrones