PHOENIX — Lastassia Eidson is the type of person who goes after her dreams. She dreamed of being on the radio and became a popular DJ named "Lady La."
She's never taken a moment for granted. She even opened her own shaved ice business named Mahalo Made.
But recently, a dramatic health scare put everything on hold. 12News’ Allison Rodriguez caught up with her at her Valley home to detail every moment.
"I literally thought that was it for me," Eidson said.
She said her whole world changed in an instant after what seemed like a typical weekend in mid-April.
"I was at the pool all day. I was having a fantastic day. I came home, I was going to eat dinner." But then out of nowhere, she said, "A thunderclap headache. Just a big smack. And then I was like woah, what is going on? I'm not someone who gets headaches regularly or migraines regularly."
The pain became so intense, she dropped to her knees and called 911.
"As soon as the operator was speaking to me and was like 'Hey can you give me your name and your phone number,' I couldn't get the words out," she recalled.
She was rushed to the emergency room where she was told it could be hours to get a scan. But she said she felt like her head was going to explode from the pain.
Eidson remembered thinking, "I can't do this for a couple of hours, something else has to happen. And then I blacked out.”
A rushed scan showed she had blood in her brain. She was flown right away for emergency surgery and when she woke up, her family was surrounding her. She couldn’t speak because she’d been intubated.
Her family had to explain what happened to her.
"They let me know that I was flown there by helicopter and that I had a surgery," Eidson stated. "I had a drain in my head to my brain. They drilled a hole."
She's been sharing her incredible recovery through social media and thanking the neurosurgeon she credits with saving her life, Dr. John Wanebo.
Wanebo said she suffered a subarachnoid hemorrhage. And it’s not something he sees too often.
"Her type of bleed is relatively rare," he commented, and they don't know why it happened to her.
"It's not a well-understood problem when you have a spontaneous subarachnoid hemorrhage like hers, without a blood vessel problem that you know about," he explained.
She had no conditions, and no warning and she's still processing what happened to her.
"I still can't believe this happened to me and not somebody else," Eidson said.
She's not fully recovered yet, but she's getting there and while she's always lived in the moment, she feels now is the time to live fearlessly.
Her message to everyone now is, "I would hope that whatever that thing is that's calling you, I hope that you would just do it now while you have the opportunity, while you have your mobility, while you have your energy, while you have your mind. Like, just do it now. Why wait?"
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