If her mother always told her that cracking your knuckles was bad, it turns out she had a bit of a point. A 23-year-old girl suffered a stroke after cracking her neck.
Natalie Kunicki is a paramedic based in the UK. She was lying in bed watching a movie with a friend. She cracked her neck and 15 minutes later when she went to the bathroom she fell to the floor realizing she couldn't move her left leg.
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“I wasn't even trying to crack my neck. It just happened,” she told the Daily Mail. “I got up and tried to go to the bathroom. Then I looked down and realized I wasn't moving my left leg, so I fell to the ground. My friend had to come get me. She thought I was drunk, but I knew something was wrong.”
Kunicki told the news outlet that she was initially hesitant to call paramedics. She was worried that her co-workers might think she was drunk. But she was unable to go back to sleep after the incident and finally called an ambulance.
“I think they looked at me at first like they thought I was just a classic case of drunkenness. However, I told them I was a paramedic and I knew something was wrong,” she said.
In the ambulance, initial tests showed that her blood pressure and heart rate were abnormally high. After being taken to the hospital, she was told that she had suffered a stroke. One of her vertebral arteries burst, causing a clot to form in her brain.
Kunicki underwent a three-hour emergency surgery. Doctors replaced the severed artery with a stent. As a result of the stroke, the entire left side of Kunicki's body is paralyzed.
Although Kunicki has a long road to recovery, she is starting to regain movement in her limbs. She can now walk for a few minutes and is looking forward to getting back to work. According to the agency, doctors are not sure if and when she will make a full recovery.
Is cracking joints bad?
Although Kunicki's case is rare, it's important to know how these injuries can occur. According to the Cleveland Clinic, a cervical artery dissection happens when any major artery in the neck tears and begins to bleed. The first sign of a cervical artery rupture can be a stroke, as was the case with Kunicki.
What causes a cervical artery dissection? Hyperextension of the neck during exercise is one of the reasons, in addition to blunt neck injuries and genetic connective tissue disorders. Smokers and people with high blood pressure are at greater risk of having a cervical artery dissection.
"People need to know that even if you're young something so simple can cause a stroke," Kunicki told the Daily Mail. “Mine was one in a million, but a severed vertebral artery is actually a pretty common cause of strokes in young people.”
Kunicki's family has created a GoFundMe page for her recovery.