A woman from the UK named Hayley Black has said that she now has a lifelong spine injury after what started as a normal morning yawn. This story has horrified many people. The mother of one child told The Sun that the occurrence, which she believed was prompted by the force of the yawn, led to a medical emergency that almost killed her and left her with a long-term ailment.
From a Yawn to a “Electric Shock”
Black says the event happened one morning after she observed her baby daughter yawn. “I yawned and stretched without thinking about it, and right away I felt this electric shock go through half my body,” she said.
At first, her husband didn’t believe her, but when her health got worse, he called for help. The trip to the hospital was “excruciating,” and every bump in the road made her feel like her spine was “being ripped apart.”
At first, doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with her when she was admitted, but further tests showed the startling truth. Black added that the “force of the yawn” made two vertebrae in her neck “shoot forward” into her spinal cord, which crushed it. The injury made her “completely paralyzed down my right-hand side.”
A Dangerous Operation and a Life-Changing Diagnosis
Black’s physicians told her family that the injury was much worse than they had first assumed. They said she had a “50/50 chance” of surviving the surgery and a comparable likelihood of being able to walk again.
She adds that following emergency surgery, all of her functions came back, which she calls a “miracle” and thanks to her medical team. But the event has had a lasting effect. Black eventually got fibromyalgia, which causes long-term discomfort and tiredness. Her spinal cord was also irreversibly damaged.
The ordeal also flipped her family’s life “upside down,” since she couldn’t work or take care of her kids and even lost her home for a while. Black says she is always afraid of yawning now. She says, “Every time I feel one coming, I try to stop it.” It still has an effect on me every day.