WCCO-TV anchor Don Shelby, who suffered a mild stroke as the result of a congenital heart problem four years ago, experienced  "about ten minutes of difficulty speaking" while doing his afternoon radio show (for WCCO-AM) last Thursday. Encouraged to "go home, get some sleep, and call a doctor," Shelby went home and came back to do TV's ten o'clock show—he then allowed his wife, Barbara, to call a doctor the following morning.

Shelby hasn't been on radio or TV since, but he says he'll be back on the ten Wednesday evening—the last  night of the February ratings period—before taking a planned weeklong break.

'CCO-AM will fill his radio gig until he returns from holiday.

So Don, you've had a stroke, you're having trouble speaking, and instead of calling a doctor you go home . . . and come back to work? WTF?

"Oh hell, it's easy for everyone else to say, 'Go see a doctor.' They're not the ones going. I know what that means. [The whole gruesome battery of tests.] But I checked myself in the next day, and they ran 'em all and . . . "

"And . . . ?"

"Well, they say I'm OK. I've got new medicine, which is actually like the old medicine [the blood thinner Coumadin], which means I guess I'm not going to be swinging an ax too much for a while, and I can't cut myself shaving. But I don't feel too bad, fairly normal. It's just one of those things that happens, and about four years after the kind of surgery I had (to patch a small hole in his heart) is about right for something like this to happen."

So why not blow off work entirely? What's one night? Or are you going to be the guy off the bench that sinks the winning three-pointer that wins the ratings for your team?

"Yeah, like Scotty Brooks. Remember him? [An early member of the Timberwolves. A five-foot-ten-inch "role player" who hung around the league for years because he had a deadly three-point shot]. But seriously, people worry, and I think I have to go down and reassure them I'm fine."

They will of course all be watching your every twitch, waiting for you to blow something.

"Oh, I know. If I blow a word, they'll think I'm checking out. Hell, I blow ten words a newscast as it is. But it's better if I go in."

Shelby says he will make some comment about the episode in his "In the Know" segment during Wednesday's show.