In the year or two before my stroke, I was aggravated by mild but annoying memory and cognition problems: forgetting movies I’d just seen or books I’d recently read. Then there were the strange typos when I wrote at my computer.   ‘Height’ was written as ‘right.’ ‘Core’ was written as ‘bore’—rhyming mistakes that didn’t […]

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If you’re in the Bay Area, come join us as the Wanderland Writers debut the new anthology Wandering in Paris: Luminaries and Love in the City of Light. We’ll celebrate the book’s publication at two festive launch parties sponsored by Left Coast Writers: — Monday, August 12, 6 pm at Book Passage at the San […]

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Aphasia—difficulty speaking and remembering words or names—is one of the most vexing aftereffects of stroke and other types of brain damage. Aphasia can also affect the ability to listen, read, spell, and work with numbers. After my stroke, I couldn’t remember my husband’s name or how to call 911. Every sentence was a struggle: to […]

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Hear some great travel stories this Saturday night and perhaps win a prize for a piece of your own. Left Coast Writers presents Our Favorite Travel Writers this Saturday, June 8, at 7 pm in the gallery at Book Passage Corte Madera store. We’ll share stories and wine and the company of fellow traveling writers. There […]

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A research team at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), has identified a genetic mutation that is strongly associated with a typical form of migraine headache—migraine with aura.  The research “puts us one step closer to understanding the molecular pathway to pain in migraine,” according to Louis J. Ptáček, senior investigator on the study […]

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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 […]

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For those of us who take the blood thinner warfarin (brand name Coumadin) or similar drugs to prevent prevent clots, one of the scariest of life’s scenarios is an accident or fall. It’s especially scary for patients like me who, because of an acute tendency to clot, must keep their blood extra thin to prevent […]

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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 […]

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New research suggests that statins, traditionally used for cholesterol lowering, could be used in the management of patients with antiphospholipid syndrome (APS), a blood clotting disorder that causes miscarriages, deep vein thromboses, and strokes. The new research shows that the statin fluvastatin could reduce the inflammatory proteins that are elevated in patients with APS. The […]

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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 […]

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