Thursday, October 1, 2026
Brain aneurysm is not an everyday topic, but for one Oceanside teacher a major part of her life. Danielle Chiera is a fifth grade teacher at 9E school and the junior varsity girl’s soccer coach at Oceanside High School. When she was 23 years old her parents and brothers found her unresponsive at four o’clock in the morning. She was brought to South Nassau Communities Hospital then Winthrop Hospital but neither hospital had a surgeon who felt they could do the necessary surgery, so she was brought to North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset.
“I had a ruptured aneurysm and I never saw it coming. I was a healthy division one scholarship athlete in the best shape of my life. I was a year out of college and working as a leave replacement in first grade,” she said. After having brain surgery on the aneurysm, she suffered a blood clot in her lungs and a narrowing of her trachea from a buildup of scar tissue. “There was a three-eighths inch scar tissue built up on my trachea and they had to remove the trachea, take off scar tissue, and put it back in. I had stitches from my chest to my chin for a week.”
“My recovery was long and difficult, but I was very lucky,” Chiera said, “Only 30 percent of ruptured brain aneurysms victims survive and of those 75 percent are likely to have physical and mental disabilities.”
After having surgery in May, throat surgery in June, and recovering over the summer she returned to work in the fall.”
On Sept. 26 Chiera and her family joined the Seventh Annual Brain Aneurysm Awareness Walk. The goals of the walk are to increase awareness about the warning signs of a brain aneurysm, as well as to help raise funds to support essential research that may directly benefit those affected and help to reduce the incidence of ruptured aneurysms. The money raised benefits the Brain Aneurysm Foundation and the Brain Aneurysm Center of North Shore-LIJ Health System’s Cushing Neuroscience Institute.
Team Danielle Raised $1,215 for the Brain Aneurysm Foundation. You can find more information to support Chiera here: http://bit.ly/1Pe5gKy.
