Damn you autocorrect, I'm having a stroke

December 26, 2012 7:20 AM

"The dystextia was the first clinical sign that we had that she was having a stroke," Impaired speech is a common sign of a stroke, he says. But in this case, the woman had lost her voice because of a cold. So the series of mangled messages were the smoking gun of a language problem. He and his colleagues describe the case in the Archives of Neurology.
posted by 445supermag (5 comments total)

Figure out her issue was a something of genius, I can't think of the word right now
posted by Renoroc at 8:04 AM on December 26, 2012 [3 favorites]

Not exactly the same thing, but a friend of mine who'd had a stroke and been treated for it got on FB (presumably with a mobile device) and tried to put some reassuring message out there that everything was fine, but it led to a lot of her friends (including me) becoming really concerned because the message made about as much sense as the woman's in that article.

I myself tried to e-mail a business colleague about something whilst jacked up on morphine the day after a bad accident, with similar results.
posted by randomkeystrike at 9:40 AM on December 26, 2012

My daughter sent her boyfriend a bunch of texts like this last year while en route to hospital in an ambulance & had been given a green whistle. His ability to decipher what she'd said & get there before I did was astounding.
posted by goshling at 6:54 PM on December 26, 2012

This is incredible; every moment counts with a stroke so her husband (and then the neurologists) recognizing something was wrong so quickly is...heartwarming. And makes me fear my reliance on autocorrect.
posted by RainyJay at 8:30 PM on December 26, 2012

Chicago Sun-Times reporter describes similar language problems in her first-person account of her stroke last year at age 30.
posted by me3dia at 10:57 AM on December 27, 2012