In 1987, 46-year-old Nikki Palin’s head ‘exploded’, according to her daughter Hannah. after a ruptured aneurysm, Nikki’s personality radically changed and recovery was slow, but surprisingly Nikki likes her post-aneurysm self so much more! A before and after story that’ll make you grin…and sing.

Natasha Mitchell: On Friday 24 August 1987 Nikki Palin’s life was turned upside down. an aneurysm ruptured in her brain just near her pituitary gland. she was just 46 and really nothing was to be the same — but in ways you might be surprised to hear. Sixteen years later her daughter Hannah, now a film archivist then an actor and filmmaker, turned to radio to process what the family went through during Nikki’s slow and torturous recovery.

Today on ABC’s Radio National’s All in the Mind I want you to meet Hannah Palin and her mother Nikki. Hello, Natasha Mitchell here welcome. First let’s hear Hannah’s 2003 documentary the Day My Mother’s Head Exploded. Remember cerebral aneurysms usually burst with no notice and often with devastating consequences, but as you’ll hear this is one hell of a glass half-full story.

[Song: 'Goodbye my Coney Island Baby']

Nikki Palin: There’s something about that experience that was very freeing because it was just a typical Friday morning for me, you know, and all of a sudden by the end of the day I was almost dead.

Hannah Palin: Fifteen years ago my mother had a brain aneurysm when she was only 46 years old. I’ve come to refer to it as the Day My Mother’s Head Exploded. for those who don’t know — and I didn’t either — a brain aneurysm is a bulging spot on the wall of a brain artery, kind of like a thin balloon that can pop at the slightest provocation. When that happens 50% of people die within minutes.

The mother I grew up with died that day and was replaced by an entirely different person who just happens to have the same memories, and body, and family and address as my dead mother.

[Song: 'Goodbye my Coney Island Baby']

That’s my mother and I singing together. My mother never used to sing. now she’ll erupt into song at the mere hint of an attentive audience. A few years ago she branched out into composition and wrote a song about Wendy’s because she loves going there so much. She’ll look at my stepfather and start singing ‘Wendy’s, Wendy’s, Wendy’s…’and she won’t stop until she has a frostie in one hand and a hamburger with mustard, no pickle, in the other.

Last year she got a tattoo above her left knee, a little red heart on a green stem. It’s the way she always signed her letters, she’ll show her tattoo to anyone who asks, she’ll even pull down her sweat pants so you can get a real good look at it. she always wears a pair of Groucho Marx glasses when she picks me up from the airport. She’ll hand me my very own pair at the gate and then I’m obligated to wear the thick black frames with the plastic nose and the fuzzy little moustache attached all the way to baggage claim.

I tell myself my mother wasn’t always like this. My mother used to be very proper, very meticulous, very aware of social conventions, the ones that usually discourage people from wearing Groucho Marx glasses while singing ‘Hey, good lookin…’in the middle of an airport.

Nikki Palin: I’m just a completely different person. I used to be very uptight all the time. I was a great worrier, I would worry about the grocery shopping, about what I had to buy, or my schedule the next day, and what I had to do, and if I had to take a shower, and what time I had to get up. and I worried right up to the very day.

Hannah Palin: last summer my mother was visiting me in Seattle and it happened to be the anniversary of her aneurysm. after years of avoidance we finally talked about ‘it’.

Nikki Palin: It was Friday 20th August and I woke up with a bad headache and in the past, I’d go to an aerobic class and my headache would go away. It was just like magic, it was great. and I went to the aerobics class and I worked out a little bit and then my headache just kept getting worse and worse. so I was really overcome by this headache. and somebody took it upon themselves to call 911 and I was lying on the couch and all these little men came in with a stretcher and whisked me off to St Francis Hospital in Beacon and that’s the last thing I remember for four months.

Hannah Palin: When my mother’s head exploded I was 24 years old, living in Chicago, an aspiring actor — which of course means I was working as a waitress — and on this particular morning I was watching My Three Sons, just waking up, drinking coffee, when my stepfather called from upstate New York to let me know my mother had had a brain aneurysm. so on this steamy summer day all I could think was, I’m going to a funeral, you’re supposed to wear black clothes, pack black clothes.

I found the first flight I could to upstate New York and spent the next six hours trying to see my mother one last time before she died. When I finally arrived by my mother’s bedside my stepfather led me into the tiny room where my mother lay hooked up to every conceivable wire and monitor. I took her hand just to let her know that I was finally there and she responded with a surprisingly tight squeeze, she knew her only child was there and her spirit wanted to let me know how happy she was, but her fragile body just couldn’t handle it. every monitor in the room went crazy, alarm bells went off, the room became this living thing, hissing and beeping, consuming my mother’s life blood. Nurses and doctors filled the room and my mother tightened her grip on my hand — and then I fainted.

It turns out that was the second time my mother died and was revived. the first was in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. Eventually her condition stabilised, she was moved into neurological intensive care — it was this large room staffed by two nurses working with three other patients who came and went with regularity. Stroke victims, head injuries, cerebral haemorrhages, while my mother stayed put until they could finally operate, until they could repair her aneurysm, sometime in October.

Nikki Palin: I woke up for very selective parts of it, you know. once I remember everybody being in a real fuss about –it snowed on October 4th and they called it snow leaf. I remember looking up out the windows and I could see red leaves in the trees and good size snow.

Hannah Palin: There were huge periods of time when we didn’t know what you were doing.

Nikki Palin: I was looking at the leaves…

Hannah Palin: A parade of people came to visit, while she was in neuro intensive care we could only see her for 15 minutes every three hours. We spent a lot of time in the cafeteria eating sinfully good French fries and drinking really bad coffee. I was in a new age phase at this point of my life so I insisted in putting healing crystals under her pillow and playing tapes of ocean waves and massaging her feet to make sure the chi was flowing. I’d sit outside in the sunshine and meditate trying to reach my mother on the astral plain, but the only message I ever received was she was still deciding whether to stay or go.

In early November my mother had been moved into a regular hospital room and she was able to sit up and talk a little bit and was conscious, although not exactly coherent. one day I couldn’t help but ask my mother where she thought her spirit had gone while the rest of her lay unconscious at the Westchester Medical Centre. she told me she’d been in Vietnam.

Nikki Palin: Well I remember that I was a little old man in Vietnam and I grew vegetables. It had something to do with reincarnation I think. I don’t know if that was a previous life or that’s the life I’m going to or what, but it was so far away from anything I know now. I know nothing about vegetables and I know nothing about Vietnam, and I know nothing about being a little old man — but that’s what it was.

Hannah Palin: do you remember the rehab centre?

Nikki Palin: oh yes, I hated that place, just hated it. the nurses were real brisk and rude. I mean the physical therapy staff were mean, I’d get in my wheelchair, I’d come to the door of my room, I’d look down the hall and I couldn’t remember which way to go and I’d have to go all the way around looking for the room where the food was. and then once I got to the food it was all just terrible. Have you ever had a piece of steak that’s been mushed up in the blender so that it’s just mushy and runny?

Hannah Palin: I remember the rehab hospital too. Everyone there seemed exhausted, like they all just wanted to go home. I used to hang out in the smoking lounge with stroke victims who just couldn’t kick the habit, with orderlies on break and in particular one woman who had been in a house fire with burns over 85% of her body. It made me just want to go home too.

Nikki Palin: and one day I was sitting in my wheelchair and a young man who was obviously a doctor walked by and he said, ‘You don’t know who I am, do you; you don’t remember me.’ and I looked at him, I didn’t have any idea who he was and I said, ‘No.’ and he’s the fellow who did my surgery. It was a funny kind of sensation to meet this person who had done such intimate surgery on me, that I had no idea who he was.

Hannah Palin: and that was one of the strangest of facts of my mother’s experience in the hospital. she doesn’t remember most of it, not Vivian the lovely neurological intensive care nurse who patiently explained my mother’s condition to us every day. she missed the daily 45 minute commutes down two-lane highways from the rented condo in Beacon to the hospital in White Plains. she didn’t know that we tried to find someone to visit her every single day she was in the hospital. she doesn’t have any idea how my stepfather and I spent our evenings eating my really bad cooking, watching TV and drinking a little too much so we could forget too.

When Christmas came around my mother was still just the show of a person, she could barely talk, she still had a feeding tube coming out of her stomach, she needed help going to the bathroom, she was using a walker, really she should not have been outside of a nursing facility.

Nikki Palin: I had to learn to walk again, I had to learn to climb stairs, I had to learn to read again. but I had to learn to do everything all over again because I just had to start from scratch almost, it was a real weird sensation being 46 years old and having to learn to walk again.

Hannah Palin: over the months I had become my mother, I’d taught myself to cook because she’d been a gourmet. I kept the house immaculate, because she always had. My father and I talked about what we had done that day over a glass of wine, or on really bad days a martini, because that was his routine with my mother. I began to see for the first time my stepfather was a really great husband and I enjoyed his friendship a lot. but the better my mother got the less my father needed me to fill that role, so the more I became the cantankerous, argumentative step-daughter again. It was just really time to go home.

In February my mother was released from the hospital. In March my grandmother came to take over the care-giving duties and I returned to Chicago to pick up my life where I left off. When I returned home I found myself grieving and feeling really guilty about it. I mean my mother was alive, I was supposed to be happy, but I just kept feeling like she was gone forever. I used to miss my mother so much I could barely breathe, especially early on. I wanted my pal, my confidante, my role model back. I tried to connect with the woman who’d taken her place but it was just so hard.

In the aftermath of an explosion there’s nothing, and I’d forgotten that it takes a long time to rebuild layer upon layer, to make something new, to make something different. I ordered myself to have patience, to wait it out, I was her daughter, she needed me. and then slowly, very slowly this other person began to emerge.

Nikki Palin: I used to be very perfectionist oriented. now if things are perfect that’s nice; if not so perfect it’s OK. I love sex now; I wasn’t too crazy about it before. I don’t know what the difference is but I’m just more open to that kind of thing now. They gave me an eye patch at the hospital because I had double vision after the aneurysm. the patch eliminated one of the visions so that I could at least read and drive and walk.

Hannah Palin: Whenever my mother went out to the grocery store or to the mall, little kids would stare at her and say mummy, it’s a pirate. and then my mother would stare right back at them and say boo — they usually started crying.

Nikki Palin: You should talk about Wendy’s.

Hannah Palin: Wendy’s, Wendy’s, Wendy’s.

Nikki Palin: oh I just love Wendy’s. That’s one thing before my aneurysm I never would ever, ever would I have set foot in a fast-food restaurant. if a Wendy’s hamburger is in that part that you define as living, you’d better do it, and it is in that part that I define as living.

Hannah Palin: As the years have gone on the memories of my old mother faded more and more. I’ve really come to love this new woman but in a completely different way. I’ve really come to love her outbursts of song and her rather brusque comments like, ‘Well, you are fat.’ You also like to sing now.

Nikki Palin: oh yes, I love to sing.

Hannah Palin: I don’t remember you singing before.

Nikki Palin: No. after the accident I could barely talk, I decided that singing would help me get my voice back and it made me feel good too. Somebody said I am so impressed that you know all the words to ‘Goodbye my Coney Island Baby’ and I never thought about it but it is kind of an obscure song to know all the words to.

Hannah Palin: Completely weird when you think about it, really strange. for me it’s like…it’s fun, but it also can be kind of embarrassing to stand up in front of a group of family and friends and start singing ‘Goodbye my Coney Island Baby’.

Nikki Palin: In front of family?

Hannah Palin: Yeah, I don’t know.

Nikki Palin: how do you think I felt at the Mayfield school getting up on the stage and singing ‘Goodbye my Coney Island Baby’ all by myself when singing both parts is really a bitch.

Hannah Palin: how long did they leave you standing up there? where was I? was I being embarrassed?

Nikki Palin: I don’t know…

Hannah Palin: I sang with you..

Nikki Palin: No, you didn’t. did you? Well you came in late, then .

Hannah Palin: You know you spend most of your life developing a persona that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy. the right clothes, attitude, outlook — and while it can be comfortable and secure it can also become a prison. When my mother’s head exploded she had a chance to start all over again, the slate was wiped clean, and for me too, really. In those months I became acutely aware of what was real, what was important, sitting at the hospital by my mother’s bedside — important; getting an audition for a telephone commercial — pointless. My mother’s illness was one of those moments when time stops, when normal disappears, when you marvel that everyone else in the world can still laugh and go to the movies and complain about the weather — that’s an explosion.

In those moments you can see life happen; it has clarity and meaning in the midst of all of its horror and pain. but then those moments pass and you’re consumed by the trivia of daily life once again. Sometimes when I’m overwhelmed by the task of making my way through the world I try to focus on the fact that the electric bill does not matter, the idiot glued to their cell phone does not matter, the mind-numbing day job truly does not matter. but welcoming the strange and the different, being open and available for my husband and my friends, my family, experiencing love and laughter as often as possible — that’s what matters, because it can all be taken away in one brilliant flash.

Do you feel different than other people?

Nikki Palin: Well I don’t know, I don’t know how other people feel. Well I do know that I don’t worry about death at all, not at all, because I’ve kind of seen it and I’ve been there and that’s very liberating.

Hannah Palin: did you have any memory of near death experience?

Nikki Palin: No, a lot of people have asked me that, but I didn’t.

Hannah Palin: Didn’t see the white light or [unclear...]

Nikki Palin: No, well not unless being a farmer, a vegetable farmer in Vietnam is the other side. You know that could be what heaven is all about, being a vegetable farmer in Vietnam. Maybe that’s the whole thing.

Natasha Mitchell: Nikki and her daughter Hannah, in the Day my Mother’s Head Exploded certainly puts life into perspective doesn’t it? You’re with All in the Mind here on ABC Radio National with me Natasha Mitchell, globally on Radio Australia and as podcast. now I’m wondering if Hannah’s telling of her mother’s story might inspire your own, and I’ll be inviting your verbal stories of brains under siege using our pilot audioboo channel. This is a way you can now record your own stories from our web page. look for ‘audio comments’ on our home page to find out how.

Well now it’s eight years since Hannah Palin made that extraordinary program and nearly 25 years since her mother’s aneurysm, so I was curious to know what’s happened since, perhaps you are too. Let’s put a call then through to Nikki in North Carolina and Hannah in Seattle to find out.

Hello, Hannah and Nikki welcome to All in the Mind from Seattle and North Carolina. how are you both?

Nikki Palin: oh I’m just wonderful thank you.

Hannah Palin: and I’m doing quite well too — thank you.

Natasha Mitchell: Nikki, I hear you’re off to the Bahamas this week no less.

Nikki Palin: yes, we leave on Friday, we’re going down to Charleston and then from there we’re going to the Bahamas.

Natasha Mitchell: how delicious, well look Nikki I have to ask this, do you still love to sing?

Nikki Palin: yes, I do, I do very much and I sing all the time around the house, in the car and to records and you know just all the time.

Natasha Mitchell: Well Hannah I have to ask this, what’s the deal in the family now with ‘Goodbye my Coney Island Baby’?

Hannah Palin: Mum is kind of banned from singing that one ever again, because we’d got to the point where we’d heard it one too many times. but we’re open to other songs.

Natasha Mitchell: Nikki, you had the aneurysm in 1987, Friday 24th August, you were a young woman, you were 46, I mean you describe having to learn to walk again, to read again, to talk again. Is the aneurysm something you still think about today, does it still have an impact on you physically or emotionally 25 years later?

Nikki Palin: Well I’ve changed a lot as a person, as Hannah said. I’m much more open to things. and I was talking with my husband the other day and I said something about doing something and he didn’t think I should do it. and I said well I think I deserve to do it because I almost died and I kind of have that attitude about a lot of things. In may on my birthday I’m going to be 70 years old, and I’m so thrilled to be 70 and I was going on and on about it and finally somebody said, ‘Nikki, why are you so excited about 70?’ and I said, ‘Well you’re forgetting that I almost didn’t make it at 46′ — that puts a whole different perspective on your life to know that you’ve died and then came back to life. It’s just monumental to me; it’s just been very liberating. It wasn’t at first. It was very scary, I don’t want to say everybody should go through it but I’m glad that I went through it and survived of course.

Natasha Mitchell: It’s an incredible story. are there aspects of the aneurysm that you still experience today, has it had any long term impacts on you? I hear memory is more complicated now.

Nikki Palin: It is, I seem to have no short term memory, in fact I can’t remember what I did two days ago. now my long term memory seems to be fine, I remember quite a lot of my childhood and all that kind of thing. and I saw a neurologist a couple of weeks ago and he was very concerned about it and he said I could go to see him on a regular basis, you know all these things, and it just seemed like a lot of trouble remembering what happened yesterday. and the other thing is I go to chapel on Friday nights and the rabbi always says, ‘Now think back over your week and think what you did on Monday and Tuesday,’ and I have no memory of what I did on Monday or Tuesday.

Natasha Mitchell: Is this a recent thing: do they think this is the aneurysm sort of playing out in the long term?

Nikki Palin: My neurologist said that the aneurysm definitely caused this lack of memory and I know it bothers my husband some but it doesn’t seem to bother me at all. I’m not happy with it but I can live with it.

Natasha Mitchell: Nikki I wonder, as you reflect over the last 25 years of surviving an aneurysm, do you like your post-aneurysm self more than your pre-aneurysm self? are there aspects of yourself that you miss from before the aneurysm?

Nikki Palin: No there aren’t, I’m much happier now, I like myself much better, I think I’m a better person, much more outgoing, talk to people that I don’t know, you know, I say hello to them and start up a conversation and I was always a little afraid of doing things when I was younger. yes, I’m much more confident now because I conquered death, and that’s something to be confident about.

Natasha Mitchell: I imagine that your long-time husband, Hannah’s stepfather, feels like he’s married two women in his lifetime.

Nikki Palin: I suppose he does, but he likes this one better than he did the other one.

Natasha Mitchell: Hannah, what offering do you want to give people with this story — because of course an aneurysm can have very serious consequences for people who have one, not all stories are so positive.

Hannah Palin: No, I think the main offering I would have for anyone is that the brain can heal, it really can. and if you can stay open and stay with your loved one in terms of their recovery and their journey through it ,there is potential light at the end of the tunnel. It’s hard to watch somebody completely change and you know when I think about it through the mists of time, you know the 25 years gets really compressed and it seems like oh, it wasn’t that bad but there were seconds that were really hard. and I was far away and I was just trying to call mum on a regular basis to try and stay connected, and I remember she couldn’t talk very well, she could barely speak, so there would be minutes of silence on the other end while she was trying to get out the words or trying to connect with what I was saying. It takes a long time to move through that and get everything working again as much support as you can find if it’s a husband. I started to go to head injury support groups, being able to connect with other people in a similar situation was really helpful. To understand some of the emotions I was going through were not unrealistic and that her progress was either much better or much worse or what she was going through was really a very typical reaction to a brain injury.

What I found to be the most fascinating about mum’s journey and ours as well is just how much the brain can heal. I was amazed, I mean that August afternoon I thought all was lost and as it turns out all these years later there’s this wonderful, vital and interesting person who is still part of our lives and her brain has sustained some damage along the way but it’s an amazing organ. the way it heals and how those new pathways and new ways of being that part is really fascinating to me.

Natasha Mitchell: Well Nikki and Hannah thank you so much for joining me on the program and Hannah thank you for your wonderful program.

Hannah Palin: oh you are so welcome, thank you for sharing it with everyone I appreciate that.

Natasha Mitchell: Well Nikki it’s a wonderful story thank you very much, have a great trip to the Bahamas this week.

Nikki Palin: Well thank you so much I’m sure we will and thank you it was nice to talk to you.

Natasha Mitchell: Nikki Palin on her way from North Carolina to the Bahamas no less and thanks also to her daughter Hannah. and perhaps you’ve got your own recovery story of a brain under siege, perhaps an aneurysm; perhaps a brain injury of another kind, you or your loved one, let me invite you to share them. You can now record your spoken stories on our audioboo channel which we’re trialling. look for ‘audio comments’ on the All in the Mind website at abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind. They might even form the basis of a show down the track — you never know. Extra audio on the blog this week and on the website links to more recent research and developments in the treatment of cerebral aneurysms since Nikki’s experience. I’m Natasha Mitchell, thanks to Corinne Podger and Miyuki Jokiranta. look forward to your company next week — and to your audioboos — ciao for now.

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All In The Mind – 19 February 2011 – The Day My Mother’s Head Exploded