I Think I’m Ready to Talk
The Messy, Honest Story of Coming Back to Myself After a Ruptured Brain Aneurysm
Wednesday, May 29, 2019:
I was twenty-seven years old, celebrating a third wedding anniversary, and recovering from an amazing Memorial Day weekend with friends, when a brain aneurysm ruptured…
A story about survival and the state of women’s health
At twenty-seven years old, Erin Dohan’s life was suddenly split in two; life before the ruptured brain aneurysm and life after. I Think I’m Ready to Talk is the harrowing, yet unexpectedly hopeful, memoir of a young woman who survived when the odds were very much against her.
What followed was years of fighting through one medical event after another; miscarriages, emergency abortion, a complicated pregnancy, painful postpartum and ultimately the loss of both ovaries. Erin spent those years slowly navigating the medical system that often dismisses women’s pain.
With unflinching honesty and moments of dark humour, Erin explores what it means to rebuild a life while fighting against her body, the constant ongoing pain, in a world that expects women to quietly endure and quickly bounce back. This is not just a story of survival. This is a story about reclaiming one's voice, control and the courage to finally talk when so many others suffer in silence.
“This is about helping other women know they are not alone. I think we help each other by talking. Once I started talking the more I started hearing about others stories, what they had been through, relating to one another. My very big, possibly hardly attainable goal, is to do something to improve the medical space for women.”
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— Erin Dohan