I want to scare you out of your wits. I want to shake you and make you sit up and listen. Because I don’t what happened in my family to happen to you. One uncle was blinded by stroke. Another died.  I was luckier: I survived my stroke, but not intact. May is Stroke Awareness [...]

As  stroke survivor with impaired dexterity in my hand, typing on the computer is one of my greatest frustrations. Emails and web posts are measured in hours, not minutes. So I’m always looking for ways to save time. I think of myself as decently tech-savy, but I learned several new time-saving tricks today from New [...]

Professor Anisur Rahman of University College, London, discusses the latest thinking on Antiphospholipid Syndrome, its causes and treatments in a 35-minute lecture delivered October 10, 2012, at the Royal Society of Medicine. The easy-to-understand video presentation, with slides, is available here.  (http://bit.ly/VORFdC) It’s a great resources to help educate physicians, patients, and their families. Antiphospholipid [...]

I never thought much about my brain until it went haywire on me. I’d ignored a few months of irksome forgetfulness–just approaching menopause, I thought; nothing serious. And, with perfect blood pressure, low cholesterol, regular exercise, and a healthy weight, I had no idea I could be at risk for stroke. I was home alone [...]

The proliferation of medical information on the web makes it easier than ever for patients to be informed about their health. It’s also easy to be misinformed and confused by page after page of Google results that are often confusing and contradictory. Last week I posted on Ten Reliable Sources of Health Information on the [...]

Have you ever gone to a doctor’s office armed with information pertinent to your illness that you’ve gleaned from the web, only to have him (or her) do the eye roll that seems to send the message: “I don’t have time for this?” That may be changing. Everywhere these days, it seems the health care [...]

It’s a pleasure to have four of my stories published over the past few months in three different anthologies. Each story, in its own way, explores the theme of traveling with chronic illness. That’s something I think about often as a stroke survivor and autoimmune patient chained to a steady diet of blood thinners to [...]

Patients already taking the blood thinner Coumadin (warfarin), even at low doses, may not be good candidates for the clot-busting drug tPA in the event of a stroke, a new study indicates. Thrombolysis (treatment with the “clot-busting” drug tPA) in the early stages of a new stroke is often the very best hope a patient has [...]

This month the National Stroke Association is sharing information about migraine and stroke, including an article from the Better Health Channel on how to tell the difference between the two. I had mild migraines (with aura) for 20 years, which I dismissed as a mere annoyance. Until I had a stroke at 48, and learned [...]

I was slammed out of the blue ten years ago by a stroke that could have been prevented if I’d know the facts. Don’t let that happen to you or someone you love. Today, June 9, is APS awareness day – APS, the acronym for Antiphospholipid Syndrome, the blood clotting disorder that caused my stroke. [...]