Aleena Palumbo: ‘The car accident that saved my life’
On Feb. 19, 2024, Aleena Palumbo was driving home from work on a rainy evening when she was hit head-on by a truck running a red light at 55 mph.
In an essay she wrote after enrolling for a semester in USU online classes that earned her the Car Accident Injury Survivor Scholarship, she called it “the car accident that saved [her] life.”
“I had a lot of injuries,” Palumbo said. “The airbags failed to deploy, the back seats broke and it was pretty traumatic.”
At the time of the accident, Palumbo was dancing professionally.
“I’d just had a performance that weekend, and pretty much right after the accident, I wasn’t able to dance anymore, so I just left my professional dancing right on the scene,” Palumbo said. “I couldn’t go back to what I love. I’d danced for 18 years of my life.”
Palumbo had three broken ribs, a type II separation of the AC joint in her left shoulder, whiplash, a tear in her right knee, contusions and a concussion.
“Then I had a brain injury, where I was starting to stutter,” Palumbo said.
Aleena was referred to a brain injury doctor who ordered an MRI.
“Within 24 hours, they gave me a call, and they said, ‘Hi, this is a surgeon from UC Davis Medical Center. We just want to let you know that you have a really rare disease in your brain. You’ve had it since birth, and it’s called an arteriovenous malformation,” Palumbo said.
An arteriovenous malformation, or AVM, is an abnormal connection between arteries and veins that interferes with the blood flow process. Palumbo’s AVM was growing on the occipital lobe of her brain and had an 84% chance of hemorrhaging.
“It was this really crazy feeling of, you went from just wanting justice from all your injuries to, ‘This car accident saved my life,’” Palumbo said. “It was a very odd situation, and it became really confusing.”
Tony Palumbo is Aleena Palumbo’s father. He was the first one at the scene of the accident and has been on each step of the journey with his daughter.
“Aleena and I met with the surgeon, and the first thing he did when he came in the room is he went up to her and said, ‘Young lady, you don’t know how lucky you are,’” Tony Palumbo said.
The surgeon explained Aleena Palumbo’s case was one of very few where the AVM was “free-floating,” meaning it stayed compact and was not connected to the brain tissue.
AVMs typically don’t show themselves until they hemorrhage or the individual has a reduction in one of their senses. Aleena Palumbo had shown no symptoms. While 18 in 100,000 people have an AVM, she was one in 100,000 cases where her AVM had been caught before it ruptured.
Aleena Palumbo underwent an angiogram procedure, where a catheter was inserted from her wrist to her brain to take pictures of the AVM, and was informed it could not be surgically removed.
On Oct. 23, 2024, Aleena Palumbo underwent Gamma Knife radiosurgery, where 192 beams of radiation lasers targeted the AVM.
“They drilled four pins: two in the front my forehead and two in the back, and I received three hours of precise radiation,” Aleena Palumbo said.
The day of the procedure, Tony Palumbo was in the waiting room when a nurse ran down the hallway and called his name.
“Not knowing what to expect, I’m thinking the worst,” he said. “I entered the room, and the doctor is hugging Aleena, and he’s saying, ‘We got it. You won’t be coming back here again.’”
Gamma Knife radiosurgery has potential side effects medical professionals will need to monitor in Aleena Palumbo for the next few years, including deafness, blindness and brain necrosis.
When Aleena Palumbo started her AVM journey and began doing research about Gamma Knife radiation, she found only negative perspectives on the treatment.
“What frustrated me was I didn’t see any good stories about it, and so I wanted to use my story to show people that the technology is actually fantastic, and it saves people’s lives,” Aleena Palumbo said. “I still am showing how you can use a positive outlook on everything to get through some of the weirdest and scariest situations.”
At the beginning of her journey, Aleena Palumbo had around 20 people per day reaching out to her on social media.
“At the end of the day, we all go through the same emotional processing of this disease,” she said. “So, giving them positive hope and things to look out for that I’ve been told or I’ve been through — it’s really created a better ease to show how I’m doing something positive with my situation.”
In follow-up appointments since the procedure, Aleena Palumbo’s team of doctors says she is doing excellent. She looks forward to the day when she is officially AVM free.
“In the next three months, she’ll have her first MRI and MRA of her brain,” Tony Palumbo said. “And that’s where they will take that MRI and MRA and compare it to the ones done in early October. What we’re looking for is reduction, not a growth.”
After finishing prerequisites at USU online this semester, Aleena Palumbo will be enrolling in Sacramento State’s doctor of audiology program this fall and has been pre-approved for a doctorate project that studies the relationship between hearing and AVMs in the brain and the ears.
“Turning something so negative that affected me so personally with my dancing and education to something so positive,” Aleena Palumbo said. “And now, I get to continue the rest of my life.”
Aleena hopes to get back into dancing, but while dealing with physical limitations from the AVM, she has found an outlet through AVM art, highlighting the highs and lows of her journey.
“I can be creative and process emotions that way,” she said.
Tony Palumbo said he admires how Aleena Palumbo has dealt with the whole situation.
“She has educated herself through the internet in all aspects, and in every area, it’s been positive,” he said. “These are life-threatening challenges that she faced, and she hit them head on, and we’re proud of her.”
Aleena Palumbo said she is grateful for the immense support she has received from the people around her.
“I always run with the quote, ‘It’s only rare until it happens to you,’” she said.