A woman was partially paralyzed from a hickey that caused her to have a small stroke, the New Zealand Medical Journal said according to a media report.
The 44-year-old New Zealander went to the emergency room after she found that she couldn't move her left arm while she was watching TV, The Christchurch Press reported.
Doctors concluded that she had had a stroke but were perplexed as to why, the paper said. Then they found a "love bite" on her neck near a major artery, and discovered a clot in the artery beneath the hickey — a small vertical bruise.
"Because it was a love bite there would be a lot of suction," said Dr. Wu, who attended to the woman over a year ago at the Middlemore Hospital in Auckland, according to the paper. "Because of the physical trauma it had made a bit of bruising inside the vessel."
He added the clot traveled to the woman's heart and caused the stroke.
"We looked at the medical literature and that example of having a love bite causing something like that hasn't been described before," Dr Wu said.
The Maori woman was treated with an anticoagulant and the clot disappeared within a week, doctors said.
