I cheated death at 28. Yet eight years later I was throwing my life away, drinking three bottles of wine a night - until one day I said something unforgivable to my husband...
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Leola Rose should have been feeling lucky to be alive, but instead she was drinking herself to death. After spending five years learning how to walk again after a crippling brain aneurysm, she was going through three bottles of cheap wine a night, topped up with vodka and washed down with a handful of painkillers.
![[In 2016, she married the love of her life, but two years later she suffered another cruel blow and had a stroke]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/01/22/22/94375745-14302889-_pictured_2016_-a-16_1737585779875.jpg)
Now 42, Leola tells Daily Mail Australia she was on the brink of losing everything, including her husband when he finally put his foot down. His ultimatum came after countless nights where Leola, who'd convinced herself she was 'high-functioning', had hurt him with unforgivable insults at the nasty end of benders that began with a glass of wine while she worked from home and never really ended.
![[Leola was on the verge of drinking herself to death when her husband gave her an ultimatum (pictured today with her husband)]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/01/23/00/94375733-14302889-Now_at_42_Leola_is_proud_of_how_far_she_s_come_and_says_the_brai-a-30_1737592422647.jpg)
Leola's ordeal began at just 28, when an artery in her brain burst while she was in the bathroom at work, and she fell off the toilet unconscious. A woman in the next cubicle called for help, and when Leola came to she found herself lying on the floor confused, surrounded by paramedics.
![[Leola was left unable to move for three weeks after her emergency brain surgery]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/01/22/04/94375747-14302889-x-m-25_1737519208373.jpg)
'My eyes were open but I couldn't speak. I was hearing what people were saying but I couldn't respond,' Leola tells us. She was rushed to Ryde Hospital, in Sydney's north, where doctors found massive haemorrhaging in her brain and sent her to Macquarie University Hospital for an emergency operation.
![[Leola had to learn how to walk again, and it took five years to be well enough to work full-time]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/01/22/04/94375739-14302889-image-a-24_1737519190872.jpg)
Leola Rose, from Sydney, had a brain aneurysm at 28, and it turned her life upside down. In 2016, she married the love of her life, but two years later she suffered another cruel blow and had a stroke. Surgeons attempted to block the burst artery but ended up having to remove part of her skull and clip the blood vessel to stop her bleeding to death.
![[Surgeons saved Leola's life by cutting open her skull and clipping an artery, stopping her from bleeding to death]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/01/23/00/94375741-14302889-_The_aneurysm_itself_was_like_a_nuclear_bomb_had_landed_on_my_li-a-29_1737592422636.jpg)
