So, the past couple of Wednesdays, I’ve taken a class on using WordPress. Who’d have thought that, until this point, I’d been making it up as I went along, after some (well, a great deal) of help from Neal. Thanks, Neal; don’t think you’ve gotten a proper shout out yet. (Note: any ugliness and bad writing associated with this site are purely the blogger’s own.)
Anyway, eagle-eyed regular apoplectics may already notice a few small changes around here, such as a small navigation menu at the top of the site, populated entirely by the new “About Me” page, and properly embedded twitter posts. So, if there are any new bells and whistles that you’d like to see on apoplectic.me, drop me a line (note to self: start by installing convenient “Contact Me” link). But don’t send me a line about how the Romans didn’t use capitals.
This week’s other, erm, shout out, goes to Darren, who, as part of his job, goes through all the UK papers in the morning. Admirably, rather than parlaying this into a spot on The News Quiz, Darren supplies Stroke Bloke with links to the latest UK stroke news. And with that, let’s also tip our hats to Beth, who supplied the first of the stories below, and the Emperor Justinian (that’s one for classical and legal scholars), and jump into the first apoplectic.me Stroke Digest post….
Oboist Has Stroke on Stage
This stroke victim must’ve been British: “As he fell, he held his oboe aloft [for a violinist] to take it from him.” sfgate.com/music/article/…
— Ricky Brown (@ricky_ballboy) February 25, 2013
[Yay! Embedded tweet! Why not follow @ricky_ballboy while you’re thinking about it?]
I have to admit, I kind of love this guy after reading the full story, and recognize the attitude of the stroke victim:
– Are you have having a massive cerebral hemorrhage?
– Yes, but I don’t want to cause any trouble. I’ll just collapse over here in the corner.
Actually, could he not have made his way to the wings, instead of littering the stage with his strokey self? Have any of you tried to move a stroke patient? I wouldn’t advise it. To this day, I’m convinced that my left arm was composed of 300 pounds of wet, black rubber in the aftermath of my stroke.
Englishman wakes up from stroke speaking fluent Welsh
This is a brilliant story. I’m particularly entertained by it because Beth had speculated, while I was in hospital, about the possibility of me waking up and having an English accent. “He would be in hell,” she said. [Note: as you may have heard, I love cricket and The Kinks, so that’s no slight on my English friends. (Yes, some of my best friends are English.) It would play havoc with my Sean Connery impression, though.
Anyway, I have to say, it’s hardly fair, this waking up bilingual thing. According to the article, “[s]troke can have a big effect on individuals and lead to personality and physical changes. With a stroke, blood supply to the brain is cut off and in the areas starved of oxygen brain cells die and damage can be caused.” With me, of course, it was more a case of a surfeit of blood in my brain gumming things up, but it’s a similar basic idea. And all I got out of it was The Stroke Diet (35lbs lost – like that!) and a brief boost in my sense of humour arising from the lack of inhibitions. Next time, I’m signing up for the “Fluent Gaelic” option. I’ve always fancied The Mod.
Daily Coffee “Lowers Stroke Risk”
This one is also quite entertaining. Apparently, people who drink “at least one cup of coffee a day had about a 20 per cent lower risk of stroke.” The story seems a bit counter-intuitive. I kept glancing at the dateline to check that it didn’t read “April 1” and wondering when I would hit the bit where the author clarified that this would only work if one was using the coffee to wash down a c’caine sandwich.
Oh, Hello. Do you have any c’caine?
The article does note that “the science is by no means cut and dried. Caffeine raises blood pressure, and there have been indications that too much coffee can raise stroke risk because of this.” Yet, oddly, the article claims that the coffee drunk has “a greater effect on reducing the chance of haemorrhagic [U.S. readers: sic][U.K readers: not sic] stroke. Then, again, oddly, the lead author of the study notes that “[t]he regular action of drinking tea, coffee, largely benefits cardiovascular health because it partly keeps blood clots from forming.” But, dude, that would suggest that the drinks should have a greater effect on cardie and slippers strokes, rather than punk rock strokes.
Really, we learn two things from this final story. First, we should all be writing to our newspapers to demand that they employ stroke correspondents (with specialties in the humourous mis-captioning of photos). Second, Japanese doctors shouldn’t be trusted with stroke research papers, because they’re in the employ of a shadowy cabal of killer whales.
Good night, everyone. Send your stroke stories to the usual places, and we’ll send you a free mini-stroke and a box of clonus. From Dunkin Clonus.
We need something to indicate “sic but it’s British so not sic you Yankee bastard because freedom”. So like “the lorry (sic) spanner (sic) was a charming colour (sic)”
I sort of want to sugest “spell sic with a u” but that seems like it will be naughty or accidentally medieval. Or Japanese. Or like music without an m. Depending where you put the u.
But maybe thats too much commentary for a throwaway joke about how to spell hemmoragic strouk
Phew. That post needed a bit of humour (suc). And I am now amused.
Speaking of, I’m going to open the floor to the apoplectics on this one: Where do we stand on the number of spaces after a period/full stop? Show your work. Credit awarded for proper reasoning. (Thanks to John’s facebook for raising this controversy.)
How many spaces after a period in the bible? That has to be the answer right?
Yes, we have to rely on our sacred texts.
In other news, “apoplectics…?” “apostles…?” Returning from the dead?
I’m not sayin’, I’m just sayin’….