Medical history has been made in New Zealand where the first case of someone being paralysed by a hickey has been recorded. Cue about a million terrible headlines: ‘love hurts’; ‘can’t move after $ex? you might not be out of breath – you might be paralysed!’ etc etc
The incident took place over a year ago when a 44 year old realised she could no longer move her left arm when she was sitting on her couch watching TV. Probably made it slightly more difficult to grab the remote.
It also begs the question why a 44 year old woman was getting a hickey? I mean, that isn’t even really that cool and doesn’t even really make any sense when you’re 15, let alone in your mid forties.
She was rushed to hospital, where she was diagnosed as suffering a minor stroke. However, doctors could not determine a cause – that is until they examined her neck and discovered the love bite.
Dr Teddy Wu (yeah, that’s his real name) explained the process, probably whilst trying not to giggle:
‘Because it was a love bite, there would be a lot of suction. Because of the physical trauma of the sucking, it had made a bit of bruising inside the vessel (the artery) which caused a blood clot to form. This clot split off from the artery and entered the woman’s heart, causing the stroke and loss of movement’
The woman was easily treated with my favourite drug warfarin (since 2002) and has made a recovery. It is unclear whether her and her partner have grown up and moved onto second base following this incident.
