I found it very [url=“CBS Reporter Serene Branson Appears to Have Stroke on Live TV - ABC News”]disturbing to watch this video. This is not, as was first sent to me, a hilarious “Reporter loses it” moment, but a very real-looking neurological event of some kind. Especially disturbing is watching her bright, chipper smile give way to a barely-concealed panic as she realizes she’s not making the sounds she wants to make.
Not sure if this is really a Cafe Society thing, but it’s a good warning to go get checked out, even if symptoms like that just vanish after they happen.
None of the clips have the studio anchors trying to recover from having having to cut away from their reporter. One of my guilty pleasures is watching terrible things happen live to field reporters and then watch the studio reporters try and recover on the fly.
My brother had almost the same thing happen, he lost control on one side of his body and his speech turned into a random syllable generator for a few minutes. There was a lot of concern he had had a stroke, or that it was a sign he had a brain tumor that wasn’t yet big enough to show up on scans.
But its pretty close to 10 years ago now and he never developed any diseases or had a similar event. So apparently at least some of the time the brain just goes on the fritz in a similar fashion without it being a symptom of anything life threatening. Hopefully thats the case here.
I’m amazed that she’s insisting she’s fine, without (apparently) any in-depth medical assessment. If I were her boss, I’d tell her she needs to get a clean neurological workup before coming back to work on-air.
I’d guess the EMT just cleared her for not being in immediate danger, and then she has a followup with a neurologist in a few weeks.
Certainly doesn’t seem like drugs, or any drug I’ve seen anyways. And her facial expression gets asymmetrical when she starts flubbing words, which is usually a symptom of neurological problems.
True. But there are also things called “TIA,” alluded to in the title of the thread, where the brain will mimic the symptoms of a stroke for a short period of time, and then clear up on its own (“TIA” stands for “transient ischemic attack”). I’ve seen several in the time I’ve been an EMT. If she returned to a normal state, was able to answer the EMT’s questions (to determine that she is alert and oriented), then (at least in Indiana) she can refuse medical treatment. If she isn’t coherent, then the EMTs are pretty much bound to take her to the hospital.
It’s also possible that it could have some other cause. I don’t know anything about the reporter, but it’s possible (however unlikely) that it could be a blood sugar problem.
All that said, she’s better off going to the ER and getting evaluated by a doctor, rather than refusing treatment.
When I watched it a few days ago it seemed to me like she just sort of stumbled over the first few words (like we all do from time to time) and couldn’t recover from it. I’m curious as to if she was fine a few seconds later or if it was more like 15, 20, 30 seconds, a minute later?
It wasn’t just stumbling over a word or three. As she tries to say more things, and they continue coming out garbled, you can see the panic under the surface; she realizes she can’t make her mouth do what it’s supposed to do. Also, as mentioned above, the right side of her face seems to be slacker than the left side.
I’ve never heard of a drug reaction like that. I admit I’m no expert.
I have read that some folks who suffer migraines also have this sort of thing happen to them. My guess as to why she didn’t want to go is as someone mentioned simple denial. Folks will not go to the doctor because they are afraid of wehat they might find out.
And considering that the left side of the brain handles verbal skills and the right side of the body, both of those symptoms hint at something like a left-sided TIA.
Gangster: Good point, I’ve had similar happen with a migraine. In my particular case, I just found myself forgetting words rather than actually babbling when trying to make words come out, but I suppose that could happen in some people.
I had something like this happen in the past but it wasn’t my speech that was impared - it was my memory.
The wife was doing laundry and I was in the bathroom taking a leak - that’s when I blackout. The wife tells me I came out of the bathroom and called out to her. When she found me she said I kept saying “I don’t know where I am!” So she sat me down and started asking me questions - what year is it, whose the president, etc. I answered some of the questions right, some wrong, but then she asked me what the last question she asked me was and I couldn’t tell her. That’s when she took me to the hospital.
This is where the haziness starts to lift and I can remember things about the “episode” - as my wife and I have come to call it. During the ride to the hospital, I didn’t recognize anything about the streets I grew up on. Not one thing - that was probably the scariest part of it all. I knew that I SHOULD recognize the area, but I just COULDN’T. It was such a weird feeling. Once at the ER, things started to come back to me, slowly.
The docs checked me over, scanned my head to make sure I didn’t have a stroke. The told me I was dehydrated with extremely low potassium and magnesium levels, plus they also detected opiates in my system. :eek: I had no idea where they were getting this from. I wasn’t on drugs of any kind and I didn’t feel dehydrated (I’ve had experience with both :D). Nonetheless, they sent me home assuming I was just some druggie who had a bad trip.
Anyway, to this day I still believe I had a TIA. It still scares me from time to time and watching this reporter brought it all back…
I’ve had migraine aura manifesting as aphasia before - rather disturbing, as you might imagine. I could understand others and formulate thoughts normally, but while talking I was unsure as to whether what I was saying was matching what I meant to be saying. Oddly, I’ve never had the same migraine prodromal symptoms more than once - I’ve had visual field loss, scintillating scotomata, left arm numbness, aphasia, and facial parasthesias, but only once each.
Epileptic seizure can also manifest as speech derangement; see here for an anchor in Madison having a seizure on camera. If the reporter in question already knows she has migraines or epilepsy with aphasia as a manifestation, that would explain why she didn’t want a big workup.
