From doctor to patient to test subject

One day in June 2009, I was seeing patients at my neurology practice in Catonsville when I felt a sudden headache and noted my words seemed to be slurred. I called my wife, a speech-language pathologist at Johns Hopkins Hospital, and asked if she detected a change in my speech. She urged me to go to the hospital, which turned out to be a very good idea. I had suffered a brain hemorrhage and nearly died that day—on my 24th wedding anniversary. One of my secretaries drove me to the emergency room at St. Agnes Hospital, where I had been chief of neurology for about 10 years. Within minutes, I could see my CT scan forming on the monitor and was one of the first to clearly observe the white blob of blood on the image.