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Woman ‘almost died’ after yawning too hard in morning: ‘I had electric spark sensation’
A woman claimed that she almost died after she yawned too hard one morning.
A woman claimed that she almost died after she yawned too hard one morning. She said that she saw her newborn daughter yawn and went to do the same, but felt an “electric shock sensation” go through her body, which later left her in need of a risky surgery and with permanent spine damage.
“Most people start their day with a big yawn and you’d never expect it to end up the way it did for me,” Hayley Black told the Sun. “I instinctively yawned and stretched, and straight away I felt this immediate electric shock sensation go through half my body.”
“My arm got stuck in the air and I was having these electric spark sensations,” she added.
What happened next?
Black said that she felt like having a seizure in half of her body, adding that at that moment she was convinced that something was “dreadfully wrong.” However, when she told her husband about her situation, he initially told her it was nothing. “It’s 5 am, you’ve not done anything, you’re fine.”
Black still insisted, and after some time, he called the emergency services, reported the outlet. Recalling her journey in the ambulance, she said, “The journey was excruciating. Every bump in the road felt like my spine was being ripped apart.”
When she was admitted, Black recalled telling the medical practitioners about her pain, who initially couldn’t find anything wrong with her. A few advanced tests later revealed the truth. As per Black, her condition was caused by two vertebrae in her neck having “shot forward” into her spinal cord from the “force of the yawn," which resulted in crushing her spine.
“Completely paralysed”
“I was completely paralysed down my right-hand side,” Hayley recalled. Talking about the surgery she said she underwent, Black said, “The surgeon told my mum it was worse than they had thought. They gave me a 50/50 chance — not just of walking again, but of surviving the surgery at all.”
“When I woke up, I’d had emergency surgery and they told me they’d managed to restore all my functions,” she said, adding, “It was amazing, but I was still in shock. I kept thinking, ‘I broke my neck yawning, how is that even possible?’”
The incident had a significant toll on her physically and emotionally. She later developed fibromyalgia, which causes chronic pain and fatigue. It also turned her family’s life upside down and left her spinal cord permanently damaged.
"It was really hard, we even became homeless because of it,” she recalled, claiming, “I couldn’t work, I couldn’t care for the children, and our whole world turned upside down.” She further said that now she cannot yawn without panic.
“I can’t yawn without panic. Every time I feel one coming, I try to stifle it. It still affects me every single day," she revealed.
However, she thanked her medical team, adding, “The fact I’m not in a wheelchair is a miracle. I thank them every day for the fact I’m here, that I can walk, and that I can be with my children.”
