Arab Nights (imported) wrote: Thu Sep 23, 2010 8:39 pm So a female near and dear to me was working this weekend as a CNA taking care of an elder patient. It was a 12 hour shift - 7 to 7. About 3 PM she developed this splitting headache.

She went right to bed when she got home. About 45 minutes later she sat up in bed and could not speak. Off to the emergency room. The initial diagnosis was possible stroke - spoke and moved very slowly, confusion, walked like an extreme drunk, etc. They did blood tests and a cat scan. There was no evidence of a stroke, so she was released - still with the headache - and given a prescription for a drug against panic attacks.

It turns out she is the second CNA working for the company to be struck by all the symptoms of a stroke. The other guy has been thru blood tests, cat scan and MRI. There is absolutely no evidence of a physical cause (clot, etc.) for his symptoms.

One of the older and very experienced nurses where she works began speculating about a new virus.

Does anybody know of anything like this happening elsewhere?

It may be stress related. One of the hormones that the body produces is one called cortisol. Sometimes the body gets out of whack in trying to produce as much cortisol as it can and then readjusts itself. Unfortunately if you do not lie down and rest when you feel it coming on (as in feeling increasingly drowsy) then you will have symptoms very similar to a stroke or else diabetes. This is because the adrenal glands which either have aged (menopause) or are deficient to begin with (eunuchism) have become overburdened. For years since being a teenager I myself would entirely have to rest at times even if I was to be considered lazy. I never knew why. It was just better to be lazy than to have to faint is all I knew. Once when I did faint in public I had gotten taken to the hospital (bill: $2500) and they had found nothing wrong with me at all. Since my glucose was right below borderline diabetic I was kind of thinking that diabetes might be the problem even though in the emergency room they didn't think so. They completely had no idea how I had fainted. My heart was in very perfect shape with a regular beat of 56 per minute and normal blood pressure. (Right after I fainted my blood pressure was low of course.) My EKG was to be coveted. Later on with a little bit of digging, I found out about people fainting due to having an adrenal cortisol readjustment (I can't remember what the right term for this is). Usually these people after having experienced this sudden drop in cortisol and after being taken to the emergency room are surrounded by people scratching their heads trying to figure out how they ever ended up there and even wishing that they could be as healthy as you.