By Diana Vallette
It all started with a headache. In 2012, Mackenzie Johnson was a sophomore at ULL studying nursing. She was also suffering with severe headaches, nausea and vomiting. One doctor told her it was the flu, the next said it was strep throat. Maybe a stomach virus?
She even showed up at the emergency room and was told she was experiencing a severe migraine and sent away. The next morning, she told her parents something was seriously wrong. “I felt like I was dying,” she says.
Johnson went back to the same emergency room. Luckily, her sister-in-law was working this time, and she was able to convince doctors to perform a head CT scan.
“I was diagnosed with a significant hemorrhagic stroke, characterized by a brain bleed,” Johnson says.
The medical team went to work searching for a neurosurgeon willing to treat her. Initially, they suspected her condition was due to a leaking aneurysm. Dr. Cuong Bui, a neurosurgeon at Ochsner Hospital in New Orleans, reached out to the emergency room doctor with a different idea.
Bui thought there was a chance it wasn’t an aneurysm at all. He suspected Johnson might be suffering from a cavernous malformation, an uncommon vascular abnormality in the brain characterized by a tangled cluster of blood vessels. The condition poses significant health risks for bleeding on the brain.
The next day, Johnson was airlifted to Ochsner in New Orleans. When she arrived, the medical team got to work developing a treatment plan. Then, while undergoing another CT scan, Johnson coded. She was intubated and sent to the intensive care unit, and a drain was placed in her brain to remove cerebrospinal fluid.
“They told my parents they were sorry, that my intracranial pressure was so high that I was having a lot of complications. There was a significant risk of brain herniation, which was what the medical team feared was happening to me,” she says.
Johnson remained on a ventilator for several days while the team worked to control her intracranial pressure and blood pressure. She spent three weeks in ICU.
It turns out Bui was right. The cause of the bleed was a cavernous malformation, and it was also in the center of her brain, rendering it inoperable.
As plans were being made to place a permanent shunt in Johnson’s brain, the malformation stopped bleeding, her brain began to absorb the hemorrhage, and her intracranial pressure lowered.
Johnson was able to return home, but her recovery was just beginning. When she was discharged, she had lost all sensation on the right side of her body. In addition to her nursing studies, now she was in physical and occupational therapy three times each week re-learning to walk, hold a pencil, ride a bike and solve simple puzzles.
“It was incredibly challenging,” she says. “But it showed me how much I’m capable of.”
Despite spending the holidays in critical condition in the hospital, Johnson returned to school in January for her first semester of nursing clinicals. She was encouraged by many, especially Bui, who urged her to return to college as soon as possible and push forward. “He and many nurses told me my experience would make me a better healthcare provider.”
During her graduate journey at McNeese, Johnson had two young children at home (on top of her medical condition) which meant coursework often happened before the sun came up or well after midnight.
In October 2025, as part of her final semester, Johnson completed specialty hours under Bui. The man who had once saved her life was now a mentor. Johnson still lives with the inoperable cavernous malformation. Every three years, she undergoes evaluations and imaging. She still has no sensation on the right side of her body
Recently, she was awarded McNeese’s outstanding graduate distinction, an award chosen based on scholarship, leadership, service and the nominee’s impact on the college or on campus.
Today, Johnson is a nurse practitioner. You can find her at Bardin Dermatology starting in February. “I’m eager to serve patients in Southwest Louisiana,” she says.
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