A woman from Yaphank tells News 12 that paying attention to the warning signs of brain aneurysms is what saved her life.

On Jan. 1, Judy Tedesco woke up with a swollen eye and a terrible headache that prompted her to get checked out.

"He told me I was a ticking time bomb. I could be gone like that,” says Tedesco. "It was divine intervention is what it was.”

Dr. David Chalif and the South Shore Neurosurgery team performed two brain surgeries on Tedesco with the help of new technology. Microsurgical clips were inserted into her brain, which kept the aneurysms from rupturing.

"You have a beautiful young woman with triplets saved and cured, so it's amazing. For me as a neurosurgeon, I find it humbling,” says Chalif.

Although it may seem nerve-racking, Tedesco, a mother of 18-year-old triplets, says she wasn’t worried. "I felt that I would be OK - I just had the feeling it wasn't going to take me out.”

Ruptures occur in about 30,000 people nationwide each year.

Symptoms of an unruptured brain aneurysm include: visual disturbances, pain around the eye, numbness on one side of the face, difficulty speaking, headaches and loss of balance.

Risk factors include: women over the age of 50, high blood pressure, drug abuse, heavy alcohol consumption and cigarette smoking.

Tedesco says she smoked a pack of cigarettes a day for 30 years and feels thankful for a second chance, saying in part, “It’s all behind me now.”