A TV news anchor left viewers deeply concerned after one side of his face suddenly appeared to droop during a live broadcast, prompting fears he may have been suffering a stroke.
Australian Broadcasting Corporation Melbourne anchor Iskhandar Razak was delivering an on-air weather update on Friday, Sept. 4, when he noticed something was wrong.
As Razak continued speaking, part of his face appeared to stop moving normally and he began talking more noticeably from one side of his mouth.
Viewers quickly noticed the change and flooded social media with messages asking whether he was OK.
Razak has now revealed that he initially feared the worst himself.
However, after being examined at a hospital, doctors determined that he had not suffered a stroke. Instead, he was diagnosed with Bell’s palsy, a condition that can cause sudden weakness or paralysis on one side of the face.
Razak later shared an update with viewers on Instagram.
“Good news, it’s not a stroke, but as you can see my face isn’t really reacting as it normally would,” he said.
“There’s some paralysation of this side of the face at the moment.”
Razak thanked everyone who reached out after noticing something was wrong and said an emergency room visit confirmed that the condition was not considered life-threatening.
He explained that doctors told him the facial weakness was caused by Bell’s palsy and inflammation affecting a facial nerve.
Razak said he had been able to make the symptoms less noticeable at times while working, but viewers with a sharp eye could still spot that something was off.
His eye, in particular, has been slow to close normally.
“So I am going to take a few days off, and hopefully this will sort itself out with medication and treatment in a few weeks tops,” Razak said.
He even managed to joke about the situation, telling viewers that if they spotted him wearing an eye patch, they would now know why.
Razak later opened up further about the frightening experience during an appearance on ABC Radio Melbourne.
He said he had been feeling unwell before the broadcast and had slept poorly the previous night.
The first moment he realized something might seriously be wrong came around 3:45 p.m. while he was appearing on air with Charlie Pickering.
Razak said he suddenly felt as though he was speaking out of the side of his mouth.
“At the same time, I was thinking, the worst thing is that something’s really wrong here and it could be a stroke,” he recalled.
Still, he remained completely coherent and said nobody around him immediately commented on any changes to his face.
It wasn’t until Razak returned home that the problem became impossible to ignore.
His wife, who is a general practitioner, looked at him and immediately noticed that half of his face was drooping.
Razak said he even tried to puff out his cheeks but discovered he could no longer do it properly because he had lost some of the muscle control on one side of his face.
Doctors eventually diagnosed him with Bell’s palsy.
Razak said medical professionals told him a full recovery can sometimes take between three and six months, although symptoms can improve sooner.
For now, the anchor plans to take several weeks away from work while he undergoes treatment and recovers.
Despite the frightening moment that played out in front of viewers, Razak said the most important news is that doctors ruled out a stroke.