I’m not hearing the expression TIA on TV, probably because most people have never heard of it. My uneducated opinion is that TIA could be Trump’s problem.
TIA stands for transient ischemic attack. It is often called a ‘mini-stroke’, as it displays stroke-like symptoms for a temporary (transient) period. An ischemic stroke is a blockage of blood vessels in the brain, as is a TIA, only the TIA is only temporary.
Trump’s drooping face, a typical stroke symptom, is now familiar to most people, but it was only temporary. His face is now more or less back to normal.
The bruises on his right hand were originally described, ridiculously, as caused by too much hand-shaking. The administration then retracted its obvious lie, and said it was a result of a lot of aspirin. Aspirin is a blood-thinner, so aspirin, or some other thinner, could be being administered to Trump as a prevention of stroke.
Bruised hand. From shaking hands? Or administration of a blood thinner?
Why did they call for a special, semi-secret physical check-up and try to disguise it as ‘routine’? Perhaps the face-droop tipped them off. They gave him a cognitive test to see whether his brain was functioning. Maybe they suspected that a TIA could have caused a malfunction. By the way, the most common cognitive test – probably the one given to Trump – is the MoCA. The MoCA is not just a general test of cognitive function; it tests quite specific functions, such as memory, attention, language, and executive skills. Thus, Trump might have scored 100% on most sections of the test, but failed one or two specific functions.
MoCA questions are considered easy for normal brains, like drawing a clock. Trump said that some questions were difficult. They shouldn’t have been. Maybe those ‘difficult’ questions tipped the doctors off to an area of possible malfunction.
The impairment of one function, say, memory, might prompt the medical team to suspect brain impairment in the memory sections of the brain. They could then go in with an MRI to see whether there was any blockage there. It might even pick up a brain tumor, or a clot. This could be the reason for the extraordinary call for an MRI, which is never part of a ‘routine’ physical examination, as Trump has claimed.
Since a TIA is only temporary, it is possible that the MRI didn’t pick up any ischemia, and so Trump could claim that it was ‘perfect’. (Or maybe they did find something, but Trump just lied about it.) Maybe he has actually had a real stroke.
Assuming that TIA is the problem, or at least that Trump is at risk of a stroke, what is the prognosis? The Mayo Clinic estimates that 1 in 3 people who experience a TIA will eventually have a stroke. I think that stroke prevention will be the doctors’ number one concern for Trump.
There are, of course, many alternative possible explanations for Trump’s physical and mental problems. My TIA explanation ties together many of the threads:
- Bruised hand (aspirin?)
- Need for cognitive test
- Difficulty of cognitive test
- Call for secret MRI
- Droopy face (temporary)
The more the White House tries to hide Trump’s condition with ridiculous lies, such as shaking hands too much, the less anyone will believe anything they say, and the more people (like me) will speculate as to what serious condition is being hidden.