June 23, 2014

"Woman in 'selfie' stroke video."

"Quick-thinking Stacey Yepes from Canada films herself on her phone whilst suffering a mini-stroke, after being told by doctors she was stressed."

Is this a vision of the future? (Pick the most likely option.)
  
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26 comments:

The Drill SGT said...

National Healthcare manages demand by rationing and lying to patients.

Coming to a town near you...

Anonymous said...

I was thinking something entirely different when I read "selfie stroke video".

richard mcenroe said...

A video record of your decaying health might be useful when Obamacare kicks in. Your survivors will need the evidence for the lawsuit.

Big Mike said...

@Althouse, I think you meant to write "displaying their medical conditions in selfies".

The dreaded autocorrect seems to have struck.

Curious George said...

Next video will be her rolling in cash from the settlement.

Bob Ellison said...

Sickness sucks. [Editor: you're not doing it right.] I have a connection here. [Editor: stop being self-centered. Think of the whole.] I'm tired. [Editor: so stop typing.]

Rob said...

Selfie stroke video turns out to be about an actual stroke? You should be writing headlines for Buzzfeed.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

Yes, you'll need to put out a viral video to convince doctors your problem is not all in your head.

If she was suffering a stroke wasn't her problem, in fact, all in her head?

Ignorance is Bliss said...

Unfortunately my data limits prevent me from uploading my four hour video showing that I suffer from priapism.

Anonymous said...

When I read that title I must confess I expected something about masturbation. Something about putting the words "stroke" and "selfie" together, I guess.

Ann Althouse said...

@Big Mike Thanks. Meade had caught that on proofread, and it's corrected back to what it was autocorrected away from ("selfless").

I have to keep an eye on the screen!

Helenhightops said...

Nothing like driving while filming yourself having a stroke, while looking directly at your iphone.

Ann Althouse said...

On the masturbation observations…

I'm picturing a future in which patients phone doctors to say "I'm having a stroke" and the doctors respond "Sorry, I'm not into phone sex" or "Don't worry, it's perfectly safe."

CWJ said...

Oh Canada!

MadisonMan said...

If I knew I had had a stroke (I don't think this woman was suffering a stroke as she filmed it -- posted without watching), the last thing I'd be doing would be sitting in my car filming, even if I had been dismissed by a doctor. (And I'll be pedantic and say the doctor was right -- she *was* stressed. Aren't all strokes stressors on the brain?)

This woman thought she was having a stroke -- but what happened to her next was amazing! That's how the annoying headline for this episode will read on facebook.

Alex said...

Honestly I thought puerile things too at first. Of course Althouse has a way of phrasing titles!

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

Hey, Kaiser Permanente already invites you to submit illustrative photos of your ailments when desired.

Mary Beth said...

I can see making a video to show doctors what your symptoms are, I don't see the need in posting it online.

Since she went to a second hospital, who's to know if they would have believed her and understood her symptoms without a video. We would only know the usefulness of it if she had gone back to the original doctors.

lgv said...

How about "Yes, this is the future. You must submit a selfie video before even seeing a doctor."

Wince said...

Anthony Weiner was unavailable for comment.

Carl Pham said...

It's a brilliant and absurdly underused way of collecting important data. Despite fancy imaging and advances in the lab, almost nothing is as solidly diagnostic as a detailed history and -- I know this will shock you -- people turn out not to be so good at relating the history of their own physical state. They misremember, they don't know what's important and what's trivial, they forget, they minimize and exaggerate and even lie outright.

Collecting actual imagery of your history and bringing it in to the doc would in a number of cases be extremely useful and lead to much more accurate diagnoses, fewer nasty tests, and better treatment.

Even at a lesser level, the world is so waiting for an app that prompts you to enter in appropriate symptoms at the time you experience them, so you can bring an actual diary of sorts in to the doc for evaluation. This would probably make the most difference in the elderly, who are often on a variety of meds and who need to be monitored for side-effects.

traditionalguy said...

The RSV ( Revised Standard Version) of the Bible, faored by Episcopalians and sometimes called the Reversed Version by critics, says in Genesis 1:6,

"Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters...the waters which were under the firmament from the waters that were above the firmament. And it was so."

So that reversed pond pic looks like a Day 2 creation pic in old Wisconsin.

William said...

She's building a malpractice case. Even if it all turns out for the absolute worst, the pictures will be valuable to the estate. Sadly, who among us would be so callous as to examine videos our dear mum left to us that were labelled selfie stroke videos.

Annie said...

I read something, not that long ago, that said one of the most viewed sites in Canada was WebMD. The lines to be seen are long, so many are self diagnosing.

theo said...

Having had a "mini-stroke" I can tell you that taking a "selfie" was the last thing on my mind.

Driving a car and doing a "selfie" while having a stroke is something I couldn't even contemplate.

If she was truly having a stroke she would have had anxiety levels off the charts and wouldn't have had the presence of mind to record herself while driving.

Perhaps I've missed something here (after all I did have a stroke) but something seems a bit false about this report.

mikee said...

As new parents, one of whom was a medical student, we were disturbed by 24 hours of vomiting by our one month old son.

We went to the Emory University Emergency Room, at 11:30 on a Saturday night, when our son started looking dehydrated despite applications of Pedialyte and multiple attempted feedings with formula.

The little trooper revived in the new environment of the ER and was a delight to the nurses, who coddled him. The ER doc, a young and new physician, was ready to turf us back home when my wife suggested we feed the babe and watch what happened.

Ten minutes later we were quite smug and the doc was covered from chest to knees with projectile baby formula vomit. He then took a good history and we realized that we had switched brands of baby formula (due to pantry shortage of our preferred brand) 24 hours before the ER visit.

We switched back and the baby did fine.

And we learned one way to convince an ER doc that there is a problem is to have that problem all over his scrubs.