An Oklahoma news anchor suffered a stroke in the middle of a live news broadcast on Saturday morning and had to cut her broadcast short.
Julie Chin, an anchor of Tulsa’s NBC affiliate KJRH, was reporting on the attempted launch of NASA’s Artemis I rocket when she began to stumble over her words, NBC News reported.
Later, Mike Sington, an NBC Senior Executive tweeted about the incident.
“Tulsa news anchor Julie Chin has the beginnings of a stroke live on the air. She knew something was wrong, so tossed it to the meteorologist, as her concerned colleagues called 911. She’s fine now, but wanted to share her experience to educate viewers on stroke warning signs,” the post read.
Tulsa news anchor Julie Chin has the beginnings of a stroke live on the air. She knew something was wrong, so tossed it to the meteorologist, as her concerned colleagues called 911. She’s fine now, but wanted to share her experience to educate viewers on stroke warning signs. pic.twitter.com/aWNPPbn1qf
— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) September 5, 2022
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Chin struggled to speak the words that she was reading off of the teleprompter.
“Bewildered and stuttering, Chin tried to push ahead with the broadcast but soon found herself completely unable to speak her script aloud,” the Daily Mail reported.
“I’m sorry, something is going on with me this morning and I apologize to everybody,” Chin said, going off script.
She then directed the broadcast to the weather team.
“Let’s just go ahead and send it on to meteorologist Annie Brown,” Chin added.
The broadcast cut to Brown, who said, “Julie we love you so much, we love you so much … We all have those days.”
But then 911 was called and Chin was rushed to the hospital.
Later, Chin fully explained what happened in a Facebook post.
“The past few days are still a little bit of a mystery, but my doctors believe I had the beginnings of a stroke live on the air Saturday morning. Some of you witnessed it firsthand, and I’m so sorry that happened,” Chin wrote in the post.
“The episode seemed to have come out of nowhere. I felt great before our show. However, over the course of several minutes during our newscast, things started to happen. First, I lost partial vision in one eye. 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,” she added.
Chin also wanted to educate people about the signs of a stroke and added in her Facebook post the acronym “BE FAST” that is helpful for identifying stroke symptoms.
“*Most importantly* I’ve learned that it’s not always obvious when someone has a stroke, and action is critical. This acronym helps identify the symptoms to look for: BE FAST and then if needed, be fast and call 911,” China wrote.
“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,” she outlined in her post.
She also thanked her community and those KJRH for supporting her through this time and said she hopes to be back at the news anchor desk soon.
