A television news anchor is recovering after she suffered an apparent stroke while reading a news story during a broadcast over the weekend.
Concerned colleagues at Tulsa NBC affiliate KJRH (Channel 2) noticed something unusual with news anchor Julie Chin’s concentration and speech after she started to read the ending of a news package on the Artemis rocket launch.
“Something is going on with me this morning, and I apologize,” Chin said before the broadcast transitioned to a weather segment.
Chin said she knew something was wrong when she lost partial vision in one of her eyes, followed by a numbing sensation in her hand and arm.
“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,” Chin wrote to viewers in a Facebook message. “If you were watching Saturday morning, you know how desperately I tried to steer the show forward, but the words just wouldn’t come.”
Colleagues immediately understood what was going on and promptly called 9-1-1. A producer asked Chin to toss to the station’s meteorologist during the broadcast, then pulled her from the anchor chair, so she could receive medical attention.
Chin was taken to a local hospital, where a doctor diagnosed her with “the beginning of a stroke, but not a full stroke,” she said.
“There are still lots of questions, and lots to follow up on, but the bottom line is I should be just fine,” Chin wrote in her message. She added that it’s “not always obvious when someone has had a stroke, and action is critical.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says around 2,000 people suffer from a stroke each day in the United States. Symptoms of a stroke include trouble with balance, speech, motion in the arms, eye problems and headaches.
Chin will return to work after a period of rest and recovery, a spokesperson at KJRH said.
KJRH is based in Tulsa, Oklahoma and is owned by the E. W. Scripps Company.
