This first-person column is written by Roxanne Beaubien, a writer, student and corporate communicator based in London, Ontario. For more information on CBC’s first-person stories, please see FAQ.
“I was at the soccer game and the ball hit me in the head.
I’m lying in an intensive care unit bed at the University of Alberta Hospital, my head wrapped in bandages, tubes running into each arm. My friends laugh. Obviously they know more than I do. It had been three days since I walked into the kitchen to tell my roommate about a strange popping noise in the back of my head before I passed out on the floor.
June 2022 marks the 35th anniversary of my waking up in that Edmonton ICU bed.
It’s been 35 years of headaches, strange sensations on the right side of my body, and lost words.
Thirty-five years since a quiet pop in my head changed the course of my life.
As a 20-year-old, I was fresh out of high school and had no direction or ambition. I was content to work in a hotel and live to party. After my ruptured brain aneurysm, I became a woman determined to prove that my brain still worked and that I had something to offer. Instead of settling for living a wasted life, I wanted a life worth living.
Beaubien celebrated his 18th birthday in Edmonton. (Submitted by Roxanne Beaubien)
The day of the aneurysm—before the three-day gap—was a glorious early June day in 1987. A big Alberta sky day, cloudless, bright and oh-so-blue. An eight-hour shift behind the front desk at the Convention Inn, then a party with friends. Just another typical day.
Typical, except for the bangs on my head on the way home to Sherwood Park and the odd need to polish my toenails before heading back to the Edmonton freeway for a night of drinking.
“I’m going to be late,” I told my friend Patty, explaining my need for nail polish through the receiver of the phone taped to the kitchen wall. “I have no idea why, but I just have to.”
The pale pink polish matched the color of the bathroom sink that my foot was propped up against as I started to paint. In retrospect, it wasn’t a spectacular moment—no searing pain, no shooting stars in my vision, nothing but a slight pop in the back of my head.
“Sit down.” I’ll get you the shoes. My roommate Joan was calm when I walked into the kitchen and told her what had happened. “We’re going to the hospital.”
And then blackness.
Blackness until three days later when I found myself talking about a football game that never happened.
I learned that the light pop is a burst blood vessel in the circle of Willis, a junction of arteries in the middle of the brain that provides blood flow to the front and back of the brain. During those three days of darkness, I underwent emergency surgery for a ruptured Berry aneurysm, a form of intracranial aneurysm that causes blood to travel into the brain.
An aneurysm occurs when part of the artery wall weakens, causing it to widen or bulge. Although most are small and can exist without causing symptoms, the Brain Aneurysm Foundation lists symptoms for which immediate medical attention should be sought. If a brain aneurysm ruptures, it will prove fatal in about 50 percent of cases and cause permanent brain damage in about 66 percent of survivors
For 17 days I was in the intensive care unit, surrounded by machines dotted with lights like those strung on a Christmas tree. They beeped constantly and squeaked intermittently, like when I had spasms that left me unable to move half my body and speaking in a strange jumble of words. I could only watch as the nurses and doctors poked, prodded and administered medicine. I could only watch in utter horror that this moment would be my last.
Just as I struggled to learn my doctor’s name — “Just say ES-pin-NOSE-a,” the nurse explained — I struggled to understand what had happened.
Aneurysm is a word I’ve never heard before and still can’t spell. I was told that some people like me would die, some would have permanent neurological damage or disability, and some would just go away. I fell between the last two. I walked on my own two feet, but I was never the same again.
Six months after the brain aneurysm, Beaubien enrolled at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology and graduated with a business degree in 1991. (Submitted by Roxanne Beaubien)
For months, sentences were garbled, words out of order or lost to me when I needed them. Even now, when I’m stressed or exhausted, the struggle with words resurfaces—ironic, given that my career these days involves stringing words together into proper sentences.
But I’m one of the lucky ones. I had the chance to build a life that wasn’t centered around my next night out.
My father and stepmother took me back into their home and took care of me. I will be forever grateful for their love and support during a time filled with pain, confusion and disappointment.
Beaubien, pictured interviewing Canadian politician Jean Charest during the 1997 federal election campaign, has struggled with language skills since her aneurysm. (Submitted by Roxanne Beaubien)
Six months later, I started evening classes in the business program at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, where I got involved in student government and developed an interest in media. I then got an Honors Diploma in Communications from the University of Calgary and then a Masters in Journalism from Western University, which eventually landed me a job at the London Free Press, where I was a reporter for five years. I later moved into corporate communications, mainly in the police and charity sectors.
In June, when I started a master’s program in creative nonfiction writing, I couldn’t help but reflect on the impact of this soft pop.
Thirty-five years ago I was a mess with no direction or future. Today I am grateful for what turned out to be the kick in the ass I needed to build a life.
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