NEW ORLEANS — Imagine being a young professional woman, living independently, and then all of a sudden you can't drive, or live on your own.
While that can be difficult, doctors are hopeful that same young woman, who suffered from two deadly health events, could make a full recovery.
Registered nurse Ashley Pisano and her sister, Dr. Catherine Pisano, have always been best friends, but what happened recently secured that bond even more.
“The last thing I remember before I lost consciousness, I guess is, I just remember saying, like, ‘I'm scared. Something's wrong,’” Ashley Pisano remembers.
A surgical register nurse, Ashley is only 34-years-old. An aneurysm in her brain began to bleed. She was rushed to the Tulane E.R.
Neurosurgeon Dr. Kendrick Johnson knew time was critical. He threaded a metal wire, the width of a human hair, from a vessel near the groin, all the way into her brain, deploying a coil to stop the blood from getting to the aneurysm.
“I was convinced I was going to die, and I just kept thinking I was going to die, and my sister kept saying like, ‘No,’” Ashley recalls.
After that success, something very rare happened to Ashley. She got Broken Heart Syndrome while still in the hospital.
“And in response to the stress, the physical stress in her case, her heart responded in that way and failed quickly, and severely,” said Dr. Asaad Nakhle, Tulane Interventional Cardiologist practicing at East Jefferson General Hospital.
Dr. Nakhle, who is trained in complicated cases, stepped in. Time was of the essence.
“One hundred percent. So, those patients, if you wait on them, the later, the worse,” Dr. Nakhle said, explaining how quickly the organs would begin shutting down.
But there was risk. She was on blood thinners, and needed internal and external pumping devices for her failing heart. Another brain bleed could be catastrophic.
“And my first reaction would be, she's 34. There's no way I'm going to give up on her. So, we took our bet, and she proved us right,” said Dr. Nakhle.
“The unique thing about her case is that she's young, and I tell people all the time, that despite our best efforts, all the things we do, the best medicine that she has is that she's a young, healthy person,” said Dr. Kendrick Johnson, a Tulane neurosurgeon, who practices at East Jefferson General Hospital.
When Ashley woke up weeks later, Catherine, who was constantly by her side, got a good sign.
“We put on Taylor Swift and she couldn't really open her eyes yet at the time, but she was mouthing all of the words to the Taylor Swift song, and moving her shoulders. So, we immediately knew, ‘Oh my God, she's going to be fine,’” said Ashley’s sister,
Dr. Catherine Pisano, 32, a dermatologist and Mohs micrographic surgeon and cutaneous oncologist in Boston.
And Ashley, who has tickets to the Taylor Swift concert in New Orleans in October, asked this when she woke up.
“I just remember thinking when is the Taylor Swift concert because I have to go?” Ashely laughed.
While she can't fly to the Taylor Swift concert in Scotland this summer and despite still recovering with physical therapy, doctors expect she will defy all odds
Ashley is still working on her balance to walk. And her eyesight and taste have not fully come back, but she said she is making progress every day.