Julie Chin, the Oklahoma news anchor who had the “beginnings of a stroke” on live TV over the weekend, has shared an alarming text she sent her husband after the broadcast.
“I need help. Something is not Run today. My work won’t work is working my help my,” Chin, who works for Tulsa’s KJRH-TV, wrote in a text that she shared with NBC’s “Today.”
“I never send messages like that, obviously,” Chin said in an interview on the “Today” show. “That just shows my state of mind that morning. I just couldn’t put any words together as hard as I tried.”
Chin was hospitalized on Saturday after she began to confuse her words during her morning broadcast. She recognized something was up and passed the report over to the meteorologist. Some of her co-workers recognized she was having a medical emergency and called 911.
On Sunday, Chin revealed on Facebook that doctors believed she’d had the beginnings of a stroke.
“They think maybe my body corrected itself midway, and I didn’t have a full stroke,” she said.
She said she’d felt great before the show but “out of nowhere” she began to lose partial vision in one eye, then her hand and arm went numb.
“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,” she wrote.
Chin, who is in her 40s, told “Today” that she’ll continue to search for answers about why it happened and that she wants to raise awareness of the warning signs for a stroke.
“I tried to tough through it, and that wasn’t the best thing to do. So whatever is going on with you medically, if something doesn’t feel right, ask for help. And for everybody else, you know, around, if you see somebody struggling, help them.”
She said she’s feeling well and expects to be back at work soon.
“God gave me this chapter for a reason,” she added. “So I’m going to use it for good and not going to let it stop me from doing anything. But maybe I’ll let it slow me down, a little bit.”