Janine Durso spent 30 years inside pharmaceutical advertising shaping healthcare narratives before becoming a belief strategist and founder of The Believist. In November 2024, during a routine Zoom coaching session, she felt what she called a sharp, terrible pain in the right side of her head. Within hours she was in surgery for a ruptured brain aneurysm. She does not remember the ambulance, the ICU, or the first weeks that followed. She spent 5 weeks in intensive care, then 10 days relearning how to walk, calculate simple change, and manage basic cognition. Doctors later placed a stent and continue monitoring a second unruptured aneurysm.

This episode traces the moment she told her husband something broke in my brain, the 14 days doctors called touch and go, and the slow mental rebuild that followed. It also examines insurance barriers that require 2 direct relatives with aneurysms before screening coverage, and why she now lobbies in Washington for change.

RELATED LINKS

Janine Durso

The Believist

Brain Aneurysm Foundation

White Plains Hospital

Dr. Jared Cooper

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