- Yawning can be contagious — and deadly.
One of the strangest things about life is how easily it can end. Even the most innocuous things can end up killing you.
For example, yawning really hard could spell your doom.
Hayley Black is lucky in that she lived through her yawn-induced brush with the Grim Reaper. Almost 10 years ago, she woke up, stretched, and yawned as people are wont to do.
Then something snapped.
Black’s husband didn’t initially believe anything was wrong. However, as she kept insisting she was in horrible pain, he called an ambulance.
At the hospital, the staff was initially skeptical as well, until they ran some tests. The results showcased what the doctors decreed a “freak incident.”
Black had yawned so hard that she had fractured her neck. Her prognosis wasn’t good, and the doctors told her she had a 50/50 chance of living through the emergency surgery.
Yet, Black survived. Her recovery has been long and grueling, and she will have to be on pain medication for the rest of her life, but she thanks her lucky stars she’s alive — and walking.
Yawn and Snap
Hayley Black is a 36-year-old mother of two from Milton Keynes in central England. Her bizarre accident happened already back in 2016, but she only recently went public about it on social media.
Early one morning, the ex-emergency number responder woke up. She started getting up to prepare a bottle of milk for her then-newborn daughter Amelia.
“I woke up at 5 a.m. and I looked over and saw my daughter yawning. Instinctively, I yawned, and I stretched to get up and make her a bottle,” Black told the Daily Mail.
Suddenly, something cracked.
Black immediately felt an electric shock-like sensation rushing through her body. Her arm got stuck up in the air and all through her body, it felt like her nerves were going haywire.
“It was like having a seizure down half of my body. I knew instantly something was dreadfully wrong,” recalled Black.
Panicking, Black woke up her husband, Ian, and told him to call an ambulance. He, however, didn’t seem concerned, insisting that his wife couldn’t have possibly injured herself with a yawn.
Yet, she insisted that she was in horrible pain. So, her husband got up, fixed their daughter her breakfast, and called the emergency number.
“I remember the journey to the hospital being excruciatingly painful and they had me in head blocks,” Black said.
‘Freak Incident’
Once Black got to the hospital, she didn’t receive the immediate emergency care that you might expect. She said that the staff ran some scans on her, but they didn’t show anything unusual.
Despite that, Black was in agony.
“I was screaming in pain all night … I was trying to hit myself in the head to try to knock myself out because I was in so much pain. Nobody was listening to me,” she said.
According to her, the nurses were starting to get frustrated with Black as doctors puzzled over what was wrong with her. They did some additional tests, and the seriousness of the situation dawned on them.
In the human neck, there are seven cervical vertebrae that connect to the base of the skull. As she yawned, Black had knocked two of them out of place, rendering herself paralyzed on the right side of her body.
“’It was crazy. The C6 and C7 [vertebrae] had shot forward into my spine when I yawned,” said Black.
“They said it was such a freak incident.”
With that, Black was rushed in for emergency surgery. The outlook wasn’t great, though.
Black’s mother and husband learned that she had about a coin flip’s chance of living through the surgery. Even if she did, her chances of ever walking again were about 50/50 as well.
But those were chances worth taking.
Still Struggling
Fortunately for Black and her family, her surgery went well. Scratch that, it was a complete success.
“I woke up and they’d restored all functions, which was amazing,” she said.
However, making it through the surgery with motion in her body was just the first step. The past nine months have been a grueling recovery process, during which Black had to re-learn how to walk.
To make matters more difficult, the incident has left her with fibromyalgia. The nerve condition causes intense pain and fatigue, and there’s no cure.
What’s worse, Black’s family became unable to pay for their home and had to move back in with parents. She certainly couldn’t work, and her husband was forced to become “essentially a single parent.”
And then there’s the mental and emotional cost. Black said she’s now afraid to yawn — which is perfectly understandable.
“’I can’t yawn without panic and any yawn I try to stifle. It still affects me to this day,” she said.
Even with all that, however, Black considers herself lucky. She’s alive and able to walk, which is all she wants.
“I thank [the surgeons] everyday with the fact I’m here to be with my children and do the things that I can do. The fact I’m not in [a wheelchair] is a miracle and I’m eternally grateful,” Black concluded.
In addition to yawning, did you know sneezing can be mortally dangerous as well? Read about these 7 weird and serious injuries you can sustain with a single sneeze.