A story of resilience and love: how Brianna beat all the odds

Her story is a testament to the power of love, resilience and hope.

At just 17 weeks pregnant, Brianna suffered a devastating stroke that required emergency surgery. Her arrival at the Royal Melbourne Hospital ED marked the beginning of a long and challenging road to recovery.

After experiencing a major brain haemorrhage, she was placed in an induced coma in our intensive care unit.

“My case was so rare, my bleed was so big, it would have been physically impossible to save me if I’d ended up anywhere other than the RMH,” Brianna said.

Once she was woken from the coma, she was in disbelief.

“I would cry every day; I couldn’t accept that this was my life. How did this happen? Why me? Why now, when everything was going so well.”

Her daughter - who was still healthy and growing - was born via caesarean at 36 weeks.

They named her Mahali Audrey Marie in honour of her grandmothers.

But it was bittersweet for Brianna who was still missing part of her skull and needed more surgery, more rehab, more healing.

She spent the next 12 months at the RMH learning to sit up, swallow and eventually walk with a hiking pole.

Brianna knows she wouldn’t have survived such an enormous bleed without the care and expertise of our surgeons, nurses, therapists and cutting-edge technologies like our CT scanner that picked up a secondary stroke.