Leola Rose should have felt lucky to be alive, but instead she was drinking herself to death.
After spending five years learning to walk again after a crippling brain aneurysm, he drank three bottles of cheap wine a night, washed down with vodka and washed down with a handful of painkillers.
Leola, now 42, tells Daily Mail Australia she nearly lost everything, including her husband, when he finally stood up.
His ultimatum came after countless nights in which Leola, who had convinced herself that he was “high-functioning,” had hurt him with unforgivable insults at the end of sprees that began over a glass of wine while she worked from home and never ended. . .
Leola’s ordeal began when she was just 28 years old, 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.
‘My eyes were open but I couldn’t speak. I listened to 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 a massive bleed in her brain and sent her to Macquarie University Hospital for emergency surgery.
Leola Rose, from Sydney, suffered a brain aneurysm at age 28 and turned her life upside down

In 2016 he married the love of his life, but two years later he suffered another cruel blow and suffered a stroke.
Surgeons attempted to block the burst artery, but ended up having to remove part of his skull and cut the blood vessel to stop him bleeding to death.
They saved Leola’s life, but the procedure came at a terrible cost.
“When I woke up in recovery, I couldn’t speak properly and for some reason I had a very high-pitched squirrel voice. I couldn’t swallow or walk. I was in intensive care for three weeks and I didn’t move,” she says, revealing that she is still completely deaf. an ear to this day.
‘The aneurysm itself was like a nuclear bomb had been dropped on my life. At 28 I was fit, I had bought a house, I had a fantastic boyfriend… my world was complete,” adds Leola.
“When the rug is pulled out from under you, you don’t know what to do with yourself.”
Learning to walk again proved much more difficult than he expected, and at times he thought it would be impossible.
“I thought after 28 years of walking, how hard could it be?” she remembers.
‘It took me five years to work full time again. After rehab, I was only able to work eight hours a week for a minimum of six months. Due to the circumstances, I was made redundant from my marketing role,” says Leola.

Leola was about to drink herself to death when her husband gave her an ultimatum (pictured today with her husband)
The devastating job loss was accompanied by diagnoses of anxiety and depression, and she was prescribed the medication she has been taking ever since.
During an appointment with his doctor, he was also told that he would never be able to touch alcohol again, which was a shock because he had always liked to drink.
And instead of listening to the doctor, he rebelled.
“I thought, ‘Fuck you, I’ll do whatever I want,'” he says.
‘I was always a drinker, which is surprising because my parents don’t drink. I had hoped to be able to drink like before, but that was not possible at all after the aneurysm. One drink felt like three drinks.
‘But I kept drinking and I thought I would go back to the way I was. I would drink myself into oblivion. I passed out and couldn’t remember what I had done the night before.
But despite her grueling road to recovery and her growing drinking problem, Leola got married and thought life was getting back to normal, only to suffer another cruel blow.

Leola was left unable to move for three weeks after her emergency brain surgery

Leola had to learn to walk again and it took five years to recover enough to work full time.
In May 2018, he suddenly suffered a stroke and doctors found a torn artery in the back of his neck.
“My world fell into a tailspin. “I sat there thinking, ‘Not again. Why is this happening to me?'” he recalls.
Leola recovered, but her doctors warned her not to take the trip to Los Angeles she had planned for her birthday because the cabin pressure could cause the artery to rupture again, killing her instantly.
Leola, whose drinking was now dangerously out of control, wanted to take the risk, but her family was horrified.
She fought with her husband and parents about the situation until one night an intense argument turned violent.
“I was drunk and I remember throwing my glass full of whiskey at the wall. I threw my phone and we were in a huge fight,” he says through tears.
‘My mom screamed: “Stop doing this! What are you doing?” over and over again before storming out. I yelled at him to get out of my way and I never talk to my parents like that.’
After another big fight, his father told him, ‘Make sure you send me your address so that when you die I can tell them where to take the coffin.’

Surgeons saved Leola’s life by cutting into her skull and severing an artery, preventing her from bleeding to death.
Leola says she ultimately decided to postpone the trip and repair her relationship with her parents, but then the pandemic hit and her drinking habits spiked again as the world went into lockdown.
While working from home, I started drinking from 3pm and continued into the evening.
A glass of wine was his constant companion on his desk while he worked, on the dining room table when he had dinner, and in his hand while relaxing on the couch.
Leola says she got drunk almost daily, taking 20 prescription painkillers for her migraines every three days with large amounts of alcohol.
She would argue with her husband, slur her words, and say things she never meant, and then she couldn’t remember any of it the next morning.
Her husband went to bed at a reasonable hour while she went to bed at midnight or 1 a.m., and his behavior began to destroy their marriage.
There came a point where Leola’s husband gave her the ultimatum that changed everything: ‘Get clean or it’s over.’
The next day, she entered rehab, where she stayed for a month, an experience she describes as “extraordinarily conflicting.”
‘I was there with ice addicts, heroin addicts and multiple alcoholics. “Not only was I there with high-functioning addicts, like myself, but I was also around people who live and breathe drugs and alcohol all day, every day,” he says.
‘I never thought I was “one of them” or a “junkie”, whatever you want to call it. Still, at the end of the day we are all equal. Regardless of how we look or behave, we all have the same problem.’

Leola (pictured before her brain aneurysm) says she rebelled when her doctor warned her she could never drink again
After the first few days, the physical symptoms of alcohol withdrawal, such as headaches or nausea, disappeared. But Leola says the overwhelming emotions that followed were even harder to deal with.
‘Addiction is a form of escapism. You do it and you want to escape from something. It is also about secrecy in isolation. “I was drinking alone at home, which became the problem,” she says.
She also realized that her aneurysm was tormenting her and believes that drinking was a way to cope with why fate had hit her so hard.
After rehabilitation, Leola continued to work on herself, only for tragedy to strike again.
In 2022 she became pregnant, but miscarried due to a rare disease in her uterus and lost another baby this year.
“All we want now is to have a baby,” she says, and believes that her horrendous streak of bad luck has made her a better, stronger person.
‘I am incredibly grateful to be alive. I stopped worrying about other people thinking about me, I stopped trying to live for others and that mentality serves me very well.’