Young woman dies suddenly after international holiday
Christine Visnjic, 24, from western Sydney was eagerly making plans for the year ahead, and had just returned from her dream trip to Japan.
On January 10, a month after her overseas trip, the young woman woke up with a sharp pain in her leg and found it swollen and red.
Christine was ushered into her father's car so he could driver her to nearby Westmead Hospital to get it checked out, but started vomiting and suffered seizures during the journey.
“Westmead Hospital is only about 2km from us, but about 500 meters down the road she told my dad to stop the car to vomit. So he stopped the car, he opened the door, she shifted herself to lean over the side, and then she experienced a seizure," her brother, Jason, told Yahoo News.
She fell unconscious not long after, and two nurses who happened to be following in another car came to her aid.
An ambulance was called and she was rushed to hospital, but three days later, scans showed Christine was brain dead after she had suffered a bilateral stroke, disrupting blood flow to both sides of her brain.
“There was a blood clot in her leg that broke off and travelled up to her lung, then to her heart and then to her brain,” Jason said.
With no family history of blood clots, it is believed that the clot was a result of deep vein thrombosis (DVT), a condition that in rare cases can arise from long-haul plane travel.
However, the exact cause is still unknown.
“I was talking to a doctor and I asked him ‘how often do you see this?’ and he said to me ‘a case like this, we do know about it in literature…in my career of 44 years in the ICU, this is the second time’ and he started crying,” Jason said.
"It's unbelievable, just unbelievable," he told Yahoo News.
"Who would’ve thought - 24 years old and getting a blood clot that becomes so fatal."
Christine's family had to make the heartbreaking decision of turning off her life support.
“We embraced her and watched her pass. For about 20 minutes her heart was independent and we just slowly saw it all go away — and she doesn’t even know,” Jason said.
He hopes that his sister's death will "at least echo a message to all the young women and men out there" to be on alert for health issues and cherish life.
"Don’t just go chasing work. There are many lessons to take away. Luckily for her, Christine still managed to enjoy her life till her prime, both at career and social level."
Christine's family and friends have since created a GoFundMe to raise funds for her headstone, where they have described her as a "young, beautiful, healthy girl, full of energy and love for others, whose life was tragically cut short."
Image: Instagram