Most of us have at least once in our lives suffered from a headache or a migraine. Most of the time those are related to stress and pressure we are facing at work or in our daily lives and very few of us have ever wondered if this could be a sign that something is wrong in a much more serious way.
Texas mom of four, Lee Broadway, 41 years old, was familiar with this kind of pain, since she had been suffering from migraines since she was eight.
Her condition was hereditary and, since she had been diagnosed with that, she didn’t use to complain about her frequent headaches. She had learned to deal with them throughout the years. Her husband Eric, too, had seen her deal with pain lots of times before so he wouldn’t normally be worried if the migraine came back every now and then.
But, on April 1, 2017, Lee experienced what she called “the worst headache” in her entire life. She was in such terrible pain that she had to text her husband and ask him to come back home from work.
“I raced home and took her to the ER,” Eric, 43, told PEOPLE at the time. “I knew this couldn’t be good because I’ve seen her deal with pain before.”
So, a few hours later, Lee had already admitted into the hospital and the doctors had found the cause of the severe headache. It was a brain aneurism.
At first, things seemed to be going well for the young mother and the doctors were optimistic about her condition.
“The doctor came out and said everything looked good. We got the thumbs up and took a deep breath,” Eric recalled. “We knew she was going to be in some pain but that she’d be with us.”
Unfortunately, two hours later the family was told there had been a complication and then, another ten hours later, they were asked to meet with the doctor in a conference room.
That’s when they were told that the doctors couldn’t do anything else to save her life.
Lee Broadway died on April 3, 2017. According to her husband, who was shattered by her passing, the most difficult part was when he had to let their four children know, since they had all been out of town at the time. The whole family was in shock.
Looking at the tough time this family has had to go through, and given that not many people know when a headache is more than “just” a headache and it can hide something more serious, below you can find the signs that might mean that you need to look for deeper causes of your migraine.
More specifically, you should probably consult with your doctor if your headache is accompanied by:
- sensitivity to light;
- seizure;
- blurred or double vision;
- numbness in the facial area;
- drooping eyelids;
- loss of consciousness;
- nausea and vomiting.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that having some of the above symptoms indicate there is a brain aneurism, but it is advisable to have yourself checked through an MRI scan, for instance, so as to avoid any complications in the future due to undiagnosed issues.
The Broadway family suffered a sudden and hard-to-deal-with loss, but hopefully, their story will help others prevent a similar tragedy from striking their families.
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