Julie Chin, the Oklahoma news anchor who had the beginnings of a stroke during a live TV broadcast, has revealed the alarming and incoherent 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,” the anchor wrote in a text.
“I never send messages like that, obviously,” Chin said in an interview that aired Wednesday morning on NBC’s “TODAY” show. “That just shows my state of mind that morning. I just couldn’t put any words together as hard as I tried.”
Video of Chin’s newscast for NBC affiliate KJRH of Tulsa on Saturday has circulated online, showing the moment she stumbled on her words during a live report about an event marking the attempted launch of NASA’s Artemis I rocket.
She said she lost partial vision in her eye, her hand and arm went numb and she struggled to speak.
Despite her alarm, she apologized on air and tossed the broadcast to the meteorologist. Her colleagues called 911 for help.
In a lengthy Facebook post Sunday, she said her doctors believe she had the “beginnings of a stroke.”
Speaking to “TODAY,” Chin said she feels “good” and has undergone a series of tests since the incident.
“The doctors right now — and we’re doing more tests — but they think it was the beginning of a stroke. They think maybe my body corrected itself midway so I didn’t have a full stroke,” she explained.
Chin, who is in her 40s, said she’s still looking for medical answers.
“They wanted to make sure all the major things were OK so we did MRIs, CAT scans and blood tests and all sorts of things. They were able to let me out of the hospital and so now I’m just seeing more specialists and more doctors and getting more opinions because we really don’t know what caused this and, of course, I want to know what caused it and maybe we can prevent it from happening again,” she said.
‘I knew what I was trying to say’
She revealed she doesn’t have any family history of strokes and believes she handles stress in a healthy way, and she’s just as shocked as anyone about the stroke symptoms.
“I felt great that morning. I had a good night’s sleep … I felt good and that section that everybody’s seen me struggling with, I wrote that little section! I knew what I was trying to say like the back of my hand. It just obviously wouldn’t come out of my mouth,” she explained.
She’s now urging people to recognize the signs of strokes — including loss of balance, vision changes, facial droop, one arm drifting downward, slurred or confused speech and headache — and to take action as soon as possible.
“When it comes to anything medical, if you think you need help, if something’s really not right, don’t be afraid to ask for help,” she said. “I tried to tough through it and that wasn’t the best thing to do.”
Chin said since her on-air incident, she’s been met with overwhelming support and warm messages.
“This is just proof to me, for people who are wondering, like there’s so much bad stuff in the world, but there’s so much good. Because here’s my little video clip that’s gone all around the world, and it’s maybe not my proudest professional moment, but people have been so kind and they’ve been cheering me on and praying for me and our family couldn’t be more grateful,” she said.
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