Former state representative shares story of recovery from brain aneurysm rupture
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Standing five feet, one inch tall, Carolene Mays-Medley needs a step to be seen at the anchor desk in the WISH-TV studio.
Despite her short stature, she’s never struggled to be seen or heard.
She’s used her voice as president of the Indianapolis Recorder newspaper, as a state representative, as the commissioner for the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission, as the executive director for the White River State Park Development Commission, on numerous boards and on WISH-TV’s Community Link.
But those who know her, might notice her voice is softer than it was before.
“I almost feel like my voice has been kept like this so I can tell this story,” said Mays-Medley.
The story of when her voice — and almost everything — stopped.
“On September 13 of 2016, I was in the shower, I was home alone and all of a sudden I got this sharp pain in my head and the pain radiated down my neck and shoulder and arm and this whole left side.”
She had a brain aneurysm and it had ruptured.
“As soon as we got to St. Vincent, I passed out, I don’t remember anything else.”
For the next 25 days, she was in a coma.
“While I was in a coma, I was on life support, and my family tells me there was a couple times doctors knew I was not going to live and they wouldn’t give up, there was a lot of prayer,” said Mays-Medley.
On day 25 of her coma, her husband organized a prayer service at their church.
“When he got back to the hospital, the ICU nurse ran to him, ‘Fred you will not believe this but Carolene woke up out of her coma at 9 o’ clock when your prayer service started,” said Mays-Medley.
“That night everything changed and they started taking me off life support.”
She had coils put in her brain to help with the aneurysm and made it out of in-patient rehab in about a week.
“One of the neurologists, every day he would come in with this big smile and he had studied at Columbia and I guess they do a lot of studies on brain aneurysm ruptures and I had one as a level five rupture. It’s described like a hurricane, so the worst type of hurricane is a level five and the worst type of rupture is a level five and so not many people live from those. He said to me, ‘You are the only person that I’ve seen to live and to be functional.’”
“Oh, it’s tremendous, it’s a miracle. It has a lot to do with medical care as well as just who she is as a person and her strength and perseverance and tenacity,” said Dr. Dan Sahlein, a partner at Goodman Cambell Brain and Spine and interventional neuroradiology stroke medical director at St.Vincent Hospital on 86th Street.
He replaced the coils in Carolen’s brain with a pipeline embolization device.
“If you can picture a little cylinder over the aneurysm itself, over the course of six months, the inner layer of blood vessel grows over the stent and actually seals off the aneurysm. Once an aneurysm is cured with this device, worldwide, there has never been a reoccurrence.”
A follow-up appointment in November revealed the neck of Carolene’s aneurysm is about 99 percent cured.
What has not healed entirely is her voice from when her throat started closing around a ventilator while she was on life support.
“People who knew me before with this big strong booming voice, and so now I have this hoarseness, to my voice and for the first year you could not really hear me. It was almost at a whisper and my husband wanted me to get vocal lessons. They offered them to me and I said no because there’s so many people that will stop me or in a line or in a store or could be a waitress that says ‘You’re sick,’ and say ‘Oh, you don’t feel well’ and I’m like, ‘No, I’m doing amazing, just let me tell you about the power of prayer.’”
It’s a gift in disguise and a chance for Carolene Mays-Medley to be heard and seen in a way she had not been before.