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 […]

Stroke is not a geriatric disease. It’s not confined to overweight smokers who have high blood pressure and high cholesterol. “Those are the most common risks,” according to Steven J. Kittner, M.D., director of the Maryland Stroke Center at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. “But strokes can affect anyone at any […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]