It began in 2017, as a twitch in Emma Novick's left eye. The tic wasn’t painful, but it became more persistent over time, pulling downward into her cheek. Emma was diagnosed with hemifacial spasm, which is caused by irritation of one of the cranial...
Older adults are at the greatest risk for stroke, but the truth is that anyone can have a stroke at any time. Stroke is less common in young adults, but they can and do happen.
[Read this story in Spanish/Leer en Espanol]
Jennifer Dipiton Alcantara was only 10 years old when she started feeling strange. Her left side felt vaguely numb, with very little strength and a bit of a “twitchy” feeling. It came on gradually, until...
Leer en Ingles/Read in EnglishJennifer Dipiton Alcántara tenía sólo 10 años cuando empezó a sentirse extraña. Su lado izquierdo se sentía vagamente entumecido, con muy poca fuerza y una sensación de “nerviosismo.” Fue poco a poco, hasta que un día...
You may have seen Ramit Malhotra on TV or on social media lately. The healthy 28-year-old suffered an acute ischemic stroke three months before his planned wedding, but he was fortunate enough to be brought quickly to NewYork-Presbyterian Queens....
Pat Pesce is one tough guy. The former NYPD detective worked private security at Rockefeller Center after he retired from the force in 1998, then was enlisted by the center’s owners, Tishman Speyer, to be a driver for their executives and VIPs....
In the fall of 2020, Danielle Soviero felt as if she were right where she should be. She had graduated from college two years earlier and had begun her career as an early childhood teacher. “I look back at those years fondly,” she says. “I was just...
Jarrod San Angel, 45, of Long Island City, Queens, is a senior academic advisor in student advising services at LaGuardia Community College and has a rich, full life: he loves to travel and sample new cuisines, write music, and attend concerts. Yet...
Tovah Ehrlich was 24 years old, feeling fine, and working as a receptionist as she began her last year at Queens College. In the home stretch of earning her degree, Tovah spent her free time painting, reading, or hanging out with friends — until...
When Shanon Lajoie moved to New Jersey in 2020, it was her third state in ten years. Shanon’s career had taken her from Connecticut to both coasts of Florida to New Jersey, with one constant and unwanted companion: the whooshing in her ears caused...
Chaniya Wigfall, 20, is a full-time student in Syracuse, New York. An aspiring microbiologist originally from Harlem, New York, she recently finished up a summer internship at a lab in Binghamton. In her spare time, she jokes, “I like crocheting,...
Geoffrey Donaldson, 78, is a marketing consultant who splits his time between his home on Long Island, NY, and a cabin in the Berkshires. “I used to hike a lot, but I have a condition called transverse myelitis, an inflammation of the spine. It...
Some folks like to sit back and put their feet up in retirement, but not Jack Weinberg. Weinberg and his wife of 31 years, Nancy, stay very active – some days walking four miles from their Upper East Side home down to Chinatown, a stroll of more...
Getting engaged can certainly make you reflect on what’s important in life, and that’s what happened recently with Margaret Silva. After accepting her boyfriend’s proposal on New Year’s Eve, the Gloucester, Massachusetts, woman found herself...
Barbara Hirsch, 62, of Brooklyn, New York, spends long days as a housekeeper doing demanding and strenuous work. During her time off she enjoys nothing more than being at home, relaxing and spending time with her husband and daughter. Recently,...
At first, Lexi Miller thought her ear was just clogged with water. The 28-year-old account manager from Mahwah, New Jersey, tried hopping on one leg in hopes of dislodging it, but the whooshing sound didn’t go away. It was a curious annoyance, to be...
Eve Armstrong is an assistant professor of physics at the New York Institute of Technology and a research associate in the department of astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City — in other words, she’s an accomplished...
Amanda Wiggin, 34, of Albany, New York, wears a lot of hats: She writes poetry, does volunteer work for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and NAMI Mental Health, plays a lot of bingo, and is an avid reader. One of her most important...
Edwin Gonzalez, high school basketball coach, was brought down first by a ruptured aneurysm that caused a stroke, then by related hydrocephalus. Thanks to Dr. Ning Lin and the teams at both NYP Queens and the upper east side main campus, Ed pulled...
What would you do if you called for help but no one heard you? That’s exactly the predicament in which Jonas Falik found himself one cold February day. A former college professor and the soon-to-retire chair of the business department at...
Joya Cleveland lives in Kansas City, Missouri, but she’s not actually there much. Between traveling for work and going on adventures of her own, she’s more often on the road than at home. “I work for Live Nation Global Touring as a touring...
Melissa* has an extraordinary resume — by day she’s a student working towards her doctorate in nutrition and by night she’s an aerial circus performer and instructor. She has danced her whole life and has developed a love for Latin dance, the circus...
Mikal Scott never got headaches. Ever. They wouldn’t dare to intrude on his organized, high-powered life as a creative problem solver and competitive runner. His clients included several international companies, so he traveled for work as well as...
The pain is often unpredictable and severe. The diagnosis can be elusive. Some call it the “suicide disease” and Kristin L. Fletcher knows why: “You can’t live with the pain trigeminal neuralgia brings.”But the 66-year-old retired attorney from...
When you yourself are a doctor, where do you turn when you’re the patient? Who do you trust to take care of you? That was the question recently faced by Dr. Nicola Nasser, an oncologist who lives and works in the Bronx, New York. For Dr. Nasser the...
Vascular specialists, who work with patients experiencing conditions and disorders of the blood vessels, often talk of the “Lazarus effect,” a phenomenon in which a patient revives after coming to the brink of death, as happens in stroke or heart...
Hannah Bonham was tired of being sick. For more than six months the young woman had been treated, retreated, and retreated again for an arteriovenous malformation (AVM), to no avail. In fact she’d gotten worse, as one procedure had resulted in a...
At 38, Preston Bottomy had a successful career as Walmart’s VP for e-commerce and maintained an active Manhattan social life. He was healthy and fit, with a daily workout regimen, so he was surprised one night as he sat down to dinner with friends...
Cali Halperin was just 16 years old during the summer of 2016, when she got a headache that wouldn’t go away. A normally healthy and active high school student from New York City, she didn’t know what to do about it except take ibuprofen and hope it...
It started out like any other normal day for Keri Mahe, a 40-year-old mother of two from Erie, Colorado. After her daily Spin class, she dropped her kids off at school and preschool, then stopped by a local coffee shop before settling down to work....
Rachel says she had no sensation at all of anyone working on her brain when she woke up from the anesthesia while on the OR table.
A stay-at-home mom is stricken when an aneurysm she never knew she had suddenly ruptures. Thanks to Dr. Ning Lin and the neurosurgery team at NewYork-Presbyterian Queens and New York-Presbyterian Weill Cornell, she is back home with her husband and...
Nancy Jarecki became one of the luckiest people ever to suffer a ruptured brain aneurysm when the ambulance took her to NewYork-Presbyterian... and Dr. Stieg. She was featured in one of the "Amazing Things Are Happening Here" TV ads. Watch the video:
Alain Suissa wasn’t terribly surprised to wake up with a headache one Saturday morning in 2013. After all, the 57-year-old New Yorker had been out with friends the night before and had had a couple of drinks. “I thought it was the cheap vodka,” he...
Allyson Tlacoxolal tells the story about the frightening headaches that threatened her vision (and her pregnancy) until a Weill Cornell Medicine clinical trial found the solution
