News anchor Edwards sidelined by health scare

The popular KFMB CBS News 8 anchor suddenly vanished in late December from her place next to Carlo Cecchetto at the nightly news desk. Viewers wondered why.

There was no announcement on the air, as is typical when protecting employees’ personal privacy.

But Edwards spoke out about the cause of her absence in a brief Jan. 7 post on her personal Facebook site and added an update in early February.

“Getting ‘back to normal’ after suffering a brain bleed in the early hours of Christmas Eve has been a slow process,” she posted on Feb. 3. “But the neurologists looking after me have assured me that’s to be expected.”

After getting home from work close to midnight on Dec. 23, Edwards bent down to put away her shoes, she related during a phone interview this week. “As I stood back up, that must have been when the vein burst. It was a pain like nothing I’ve ever felt before.”

The searing sensation spread down her neck and into her shoulders and back.

Along with an excruciating headache, she experienced dizziness and blurry vision, but had no idea what had happened. On the earlier newscast, they had reported about a new strain of COVID-19.

“I thought it might have been COVID,” she mused. It wasn’t.

A trip to the emergency room at Scripps Memorial Hospital in Encinitas led to several tests. Physicians, suspecting meningitis, were preparing to do a spinal tap when her brain scan results identified the culprit — a vein had ruptured in Edwards’ brain.

“I was shocked,” she said. The only upside was that her brain bleed involved a vein rather than a torn artery, which might have triggered a stroke.

Edwards was taken by ambulance to Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla, where she recalls being the only patient in the intensive care unit not suffering from COVID-19 and on a ventilator.

“My biggest takeaway is there is a lot of ‘wait and see’ when it comes to brain injury,” said the Emmywinning news anchor, who