Woman films herself having a stroke in order to get the right diagnosis

Woman films herself having a stroke in order to get the right diagnosis
(Image credit: YouTube/GeoBeatsNews)

Stacey Yepes, 49, was sure that emergency room doctors were misdiagnosing her when they said the slurred speech and face numbness she experienced was stress-related. So, when she experienced a third attack in three days — the second was while she was driving away from the hospital — she pulled her car over and started filming.

That probably saved her life, CNN reports. Yepes showed the video to doctors at Toronto Western Hospital, who used it to help determine that she had been having transient ischemic attacks, or mini-strokes, caused by plaque buildup in her arteries. "I think it was just to show somebody, because I knew it was not stress-related," she told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. "And I thought if I could show somebody what was happening, they would have a better understanding."

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.