Generally speaking, news presenters want to share the headlines, and not become the headlines . Unfortunately, things don’t always work out that way in the live TV business . Sometimes, the headlines find you, and not always in an adorable way .
And extra unfortunately for Julie Chin of Oklahoma’s NBC affiliate, KJRH, her headline moment involved an on-camera medical emergency as she suffered “the beginnings of a stroke” as viewers watched.
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Julie Chin’s broadcasting day was just getting started when she appeared to be having some difficulties.
Reporting on the Artemis I space launch, the morning news anchor stumbled over her words, struggling to get a complete sentence out and appearing confused.
Recognizing that something wasn’t quite right, Chin apologized to the audience and threw to the station’s meteorologist, Annie Brown.
Brown made light of Chin’s struggles and shrugged it off, telling her “we love you” before continuing with the broadcast.
But Chin’s problems that morning couldn’t be shrugged off.
With the cameras off her, Chin’s co-workers alerted emergency services, which turned out to be a great idea. As Chin acknowledged in a post , she had been experiencing “the beginnings of a stroke” during the broadcast.
In her post, she described what happened to her.
“The episode seemed to come out of nowhere,” she wrote, adding that she felt well before the show.
“However, over the course of several minutes during out newscast things started to happen.
“First, I lost partial vision in one eye,” she wrote.
“A little bit later my hand and arm went numb. Then, I knew I was in big trouble when my mouth would not speak the words that were right in front of me on the teleprompter. If you were watching Saturday morning, you know how desperately I tried to steer the show forward, but the words just wouldn’t come.”
In her post, Chin elaborated that doctors don’t think she had a full stroke.
“I’ve spent the last few days in the hospital undergoing all sorts of tests,” she wrote. “I’m glad to share that my tests have all come back great. At this point, Doctors think I had the beginnings of a stroke, but not a full stroke. There are still lots of questions, and lots to follow up on, but the bottom line is I should be just fine.”
Chin also expressed her gratitude for her co-workers and the medical professionals who helped out so quickly.
And she shared a helpful hint for anyone to recognize the signs of a stroke, the BE FAST acronym, which stands for:
B.alance (Sudden loss of balance)
E.yes (Sudden vision changes)
F.ace (Facial droop)
A.rms (One arm drifts downward)
S.peech (Slurred/confused speech)
T.ime & Terrible headache
