Shadowing Practice: telling my story - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
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hey it's hayley and my voice is a little gone i'm making this video
180 sentences
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hey it's hayley and my voice is a little gone i'm making this video
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because i wanted to tell this story in my own words
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of just where i've been at health wise for the last month
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and kind of what i've gone through
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and what the story is here i think as some people know a lot of people know
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or you may not know i had like a very scary incident on march 10th basically i was
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sitting at breakfast with my husband having a normal day normal conversation
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and we were in the middle of talking
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and all of a sudden i felt this really weird sensation
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that kind of like traveled down my arm from my shoulder all the way down to my fingertips
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and it made my fingertips feel really numb and weird
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and i was sitting there
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and i was kind of going like this trying to figure out like what the sensation was
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and where it was coming from and justin was like are you okay
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and i just didn't respond because i wasn't sure
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and then he asked me again and um
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when i went to respond i couldn't speak the right side
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of my face started drooping i couldn't get a sentence out
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everything was coming out like not even jumbled just like couldn't get any of the words out
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so obviously immediately i thought i was having a stroke like
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a full-blown stroke um he thought i was having a stroke
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so right away he asked for somebody to please call 9-1-1
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and get a doctor where we were there happened to be a doctor there a medic there who rushed over
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and they started
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asking me questions they started testing my arms definitely the scariest moment of my life i had
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so many things running through my head the number one thing
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being i'm having a stroke i'm really scared i don't know
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what's going on i don't know why this is happening am i gonna have permanent issues from this like
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so many things were running through my head
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that um were really freaking me out
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and really really really scaring me the facial drooping lasted for probably like 30 seconds
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maybe a little bit more i honestly i wasn't i couldn't see myself of course
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so i don't really know but i do know
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that it like subsided fairly fast and so they were asking me questions
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and do you know where you are do you know your name
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and i knew all of the answers in my head
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but as soon as i would try to say it it
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i just could not get it out it was like my tongue
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and my mouth just could not form the sentences and the responses.
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So obviously that was really, really scary.
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So I got up, I could walk totally fine.
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At that point, it was really just like the speech issue.
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Went back to my house,
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waited for the ambulance to come.
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At that point, speech started to come back a little bit,
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got in the ambulance to the hospital.
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There was actually a funny moment where they were calling into the hospital to explain what they were bringing in.
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And they were like, I have a 30 year old female.
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And I was like, I'm 25.
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I had to make sure that they weren't going to age me five years for no reason, you know?
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And I noticed that when the speech came back and I felt like I could talk,
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as soon as my anxiety would like settle in or hit me,
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it would make my speech feel funny again.
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when I started feeling really scared and really anxious,
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it just made everything worse.
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But by the time I got to the emergency room,
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I was pretty much back to normal,
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could talk, wasn't having any issues with my face or my arm.
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They did like the stroke checklist in the emergency room and I scored a zero.
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I wasn't having any symptoms anymore.
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So basically they did some scans and they were able to see
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that I had suffered a small blood clot to my brain which they labeled and categorized as something called a TIA.
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I'm gonna try to put the definitions of everything I talk about under here so that I don't butcher it.
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Basically it's like having a mini stroke.
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It definitely feels like having a stroke except my body was able to resolve it pretty quickly
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and then I didn't have any more issues for the whole rest of the day
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and the whole rest of the time that I was in the hospital.
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I felt really thankful and grateful for that, that it wasn't worse.
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I wasn't going to have any permanent issues,
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but you know, my scans did show
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that I had a lack of oxygen to a certain part of my brain for a certain amount of time.
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Still definitely really, really scary.
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So when I was in the emergency room, they kept me overnight.
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They did tons of tests.
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They did blood tests to see if I had a clotting disorder or if I had an autoimmune disease or
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they did everything and anything
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that they could think of they did they also did a certain test called a bubble echo
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which is when they do an echo on your heart
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and they take saline and they kind of i don't want to say shake it up
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but they they make it so it has bubbles in it
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and then they put the bubbles in your vein to see
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if you have any bubbles escaping out of any part of your heart
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and what they're looking for in
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that test is something called a pfo basically what a pfo is something
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that you are born with
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and typically at birth it's supposed to close on its own except sometimes it does not
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and it's a flap that's kind of like this between the right
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and the left chambers of the heart so
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when i was in the emergency room they did this test they didn't see anything they told me
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that i didn't have a pfo so the next day i was discharged
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and i went down to ucla to see some more doctors to do some more thorough in-depth testing
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because at that point they didn't really have an answer
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or a conclusion for why this had happened they did come
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to the conclusion of why they think i had a blood clot in the first place in the conclusion
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that all of the the doctors came to was three different things.
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One was that I had just recently started birth control pills
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which i should have never been on
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because i am somebody who suffered from migraines anyway
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and i just did not talk to my doctor about this
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so ladies if you suffer from bad migraines
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and you plan on being on birth control pills make sure you tell your doctor
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because having a stroke is a potential side effect from
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birth control pills the second thing was i had recently had covid
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and that was something that they thought was a contributing factor
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and then the third thing was
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that i had recently gone on a really long flight i had flown to paris
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and back in a very short amount of time
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and i slept through the whole flight both ways didn't get up
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and move around never thought about wearing compression socks
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so basically all of the doctors came to the conclusion
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that it was a perfect storm that led to me having a small blood clot
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and that was the conclusion
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so they still didn't know necessarily how the blood clot traveled to my brain
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so when i went down to ucla we did some more in-depth testing
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and when i went there they did something called a transcranial doppler
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which is basically a very a much more accurate test to find a pfo
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and what they do is similarly they do the saline with the bubbles they inject it
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but with this test they listen for the sound of bubbles escaping in in the heart
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if they don't hear anything presumably you you don't have a pfo
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if they hear a little bit you might have one
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but it's small and if they hear tons of bubbles escaping you have one
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it's probably large so I I did this test
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and they actually found that I had a grade 5 PFO
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which is the highest uh grade that you can have
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so mine was fairly large but at this point too I was just grateful
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that they found it and that they knew that it was there and also the conclusion was that
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I had a blood clot that traveled into my heart
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and instead of what typically happens if you have a small blood clot is
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that the heart will filter the blood clot to your lungs
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and your lungs will absorb because the lungs are so big and they can handle it.
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What happened with me is my blood clot actually escaped through the flap
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or the hole in my heart and it traveled to my brain and that is why I suffered a TIA.
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So the recommendation from my doctors at UCLA was to have a procedure done called a PFO closure,
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which is when they go through your groin,
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through the femoral vein in your groin,
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and they travel up to the heart,
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and they put this small little button.
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It looks like a little button.
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That buttons close the flap in the heart,
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and then eventually your heart tissue grows back over the closure device and that's it.
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And then you have it forever and you continue on with normal life.
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So I recently got the PFO closure done and it went very smoothly.
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I'm recovering really well, really fast.
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I feel great.
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The biggest thing I feel honestly is I just feel really relieved that we were able to figure everything out,
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that we were able to get it closed,
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that I will be able to just move on from this really scary situation
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and just live my life and it was definitely a really eye-opening thing for me.
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I definitely felt a lot of anxiety through the situation because from when the TIA happened,
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when I had the procedure to close the PFO,
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I just was really nervous a lot of the time about having another TIA
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or experiencing those symptoms again and then I would get really bad anxiety
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and my anxiety was kind of making me feel funny.
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It would make my fingers and hands feel kind of tingly
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and I just honestly like had a really really hard time in the in-between.
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So ever since the TIA I have been on a blood thinner
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and aspirin every single day
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and I was also having an issue with the blood thinner medication because it was exacerbating my anxiety.
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It was making me feel very out of it, just really sleepy.
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but I was able to figure out the dose with my doctor and now I feel much better.
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Now that it's all done I feel so much relief
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and I feel just so grateful to all of the doctors at Eisenhower Medical Center who took care of me,
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all the doctors at UCLA who took care of me,
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Dr. Tobis who performed my procedure and has taken really good care of me.
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Yeah, it's kind of like hard for me to tell this story.
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You know, I've only really up until now told friends and family and people that I know and that I'm close to,
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but I felt like it was important for me to share this
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and because it already was like kind of a public situation and people kind of knew,
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but they didn't really know the full story
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and I also wanted to wait to explain everything until my procedure was done and finished and
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everything had gone smoothly and was okay.
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That's my story.
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That's what happened.
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If there's anybody that watches this that has gone through the same thing or something similar,
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I definitely really empathize with you and I understand how life-altering and scary it is.
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And if there's anybody out there who sees this
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and has maybe experienced similar things but doesn't really know the reason
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or know why i would definitely encourage you to talk to a doctor
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and yeah so this is what happened and um thanks for watching
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Thank you.
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Why practice speaking with this video?
This video features Hayley sharing a deeply personal and emotional story about a health scare, which presents a unique opportunity for English learners to practice speaking in a relatable context. By engaging with her narrative, you can enhance your english speaking practice skills, particularly in expressing feelings and recounting experiences. Shadowing her speech allows you to mimic her tone and pace, which is crucial for achieving natural fluency. The real-life context of medical emergencies can also help learners prepare for discussing health-related topics in English, providing practical vocabulary and expressions used in urgent situations.
Grammar & Expressions in Context
In Hayley's narrative, several key grammar structures and expressions are utilized effectively:
- Past Continuous Tense: Hayley often employs the past continuous tense to describe actions that were ongoing at a specific time in the past, such as “I was sitting at breakfast” and “everything was coming out like not even jumbled.” This structure helps convey the unfolding nature of her experience.
- Reported Speech: When recounting her husband’s inquiries, Hayley uses reported speech effectively: “he asked for somebody to please call 9-1-1.” This is a useful structure for learners to express what others have said.
- Conditional Sentences: The expression “if I was having a stroke” presents a conditional scenario that illustrates uncertainty. Learners can practice this form to discuss hypothetical situations within their speech.
Common Pronunciation Traps
As you practice your shadow speech with Hayley's narrative, pay attention to the following pronunciation traps that may arise:
- Words with 'th': In phrases like “this” and “that,” learners might find it challenging to produce the 'th' sound, which is often mispronounced. Focus on placing your tongue between your teeth to produce this sound accurately.
- Linking Sounds: Phrases such as “had to” are often pronounced quickly and can sound like “hadda.” Mastering this linking can enhance your spoken fluency and comprehension in everyday conversations.
- Intonation Patterns: Notice the emotional intonation Hayley uses when expressing fear and surprise. Mimicking these intonations can help you convey emotions effectively in your own speaking.
To improve your speaking skills, use this video to learn english with youtube through engaging storytelling. Consider these grammatical structures and pronunciation tips as you practice your own narrative skills on a shadowing site or with a language partner. By immersing yourself in real-life contexts like Hayley's, you will become a more confident English speaker.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.
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