AKA and stroke?

This may be an embarrassingly stupid question – if it is, I apologise. It won’t be my first or my last.

I’m a rural hospitalist. I’ve just picked up a patient with (resolving) alcoholic ketoacidosis – when he came in he had pH 7.18, base excess-16, lactate 3.7, 4+ ketones in urine. He was also in AKI – creatinine 707, normal six months ago, urea 18.2. He was in our HDU and a day (!) later is markedly improved- both from an AKA and an AKI point of view – and is now mine. Ongoing alcohol withdrawal management including IV thiamine, etc. He looks and feels a great deal better –

• except he has had new onset intractable hiccups and new onset difficulty swallowing with some odynophagia, both for about the last 24h.

I am working the hiccups and the swallowing difficulties up as per normal but I am wondering if a brainstem infarct – maybe from an episode of AF, or a hypercoagulable state or whatever – could cause both of these?

The work up will not proceed quickly in this smallish rural hospital on a Sunday. Feel free to tell me I’m crazy.