Local teen undergoes life-saving procedure after experiencing rare aneurysm

COLUMBIA, SC (WOLO) — Doctors at Prisma Health Children’s Hospital say the type of brain aneurysm that local teenager Shiraze Kalantarian experienced will only affect one in 100,000 young people — leading her to having a life-saving procedure.

Shiraze says she woke up one morning with a numb hand.

“I couldn’t really hold stuff anymore I kept dropping everything,” she says.

When the numbness spread to half of her body while she was at school, her mom Janet took her to a local urgent care.

“They were like, yea, it’s probably just a pinched nerve because her hand was doing these funny things,” Janet says.

But on a morning soon after, Shiraze woke up with an extreme headache and facial drooping, causing her mom to rush her to the emergency room at Prisma Health.

There she was placed under the care of Pediatric Neurosurgeon, Dr. Catherine McClung Smith.

“A CT scan was done that showed a bleed in the head, and neurosurgery was consulted after,” says McClung Smith, who finds that oftentimes people think strokes or aneurysms only occur in the older population, but says that’s not always the case.

Dr. McClung Smith says symptoms can range from numbness and tingling to what doctors refer to as a “crooked smile,” or facial drooping.

“Sometimes you have something very dramatic like what she had where she had what we call the worst headache of her life, what we call a “thunderclap headache,” and something that caused her to wake up from sleep and go to her mom for assistance,” she says.

The CT scans led Shiraze to have what’s called an angiogram done — allowing Chief of Neurosurgery Dr. Erwin Mangubat and his team to use a tool to travel from her leg to the location of the bleed in her brain, and then use a special glue to stop it.

“She’ll need regular follow up including imaging MRIs, angiograms, I normally do another angiogram meaning taking pictures of the blood vessels in the brain probably three to six months from now.”

“I feel a lot better, I’m happy I can use my right hand normally now, much different from like a month before,” says Shiraze.

Janet hopes other parents will recognize the signs and take action immediately.

“Little changes, just take them serious, and seek help right away,” she says.

For common signs of a stroke or possible aneurysm visit Prisma Health’s website here.