A 36-year-old mother of three described how an ordinary morning yawn resulted in a severe spinal injury that left her paralysed on one side and in need of urgent surgery.
Hayley Black said the incident occurred when she got up early to make a bottle for her newborn daughter and noticed the child yawning. She explained that she copied her daughter’s movement without thinking, which quickly led to the most frightening experience of her life.
“My arm got stuck in the air, and I was having these electric spark sensations,” she recalled. Speaking to The Sun, she explained: “Most people start their day with a big yawn, and you’d never expect it to end up the way it did for me. I instinctively yawned and stretched, and straight away I felt this immediate electric shock sensation go through half my body. It felt like having a seizure down half of my body.”
At that point, she believed something was seriously wrong, but her husband initially dismissed her concerns. “He said, ‘It’s 5 am, you’ve not done anything, you’re fine.’ But I told him, ‘You need to call an ambulance, something’s seriously wrong.’ He made the baby’s bottle and then rang 999,” she said.
The journey to hospital was extremely painful. “Every bump in the road felt like my spine was being ripped apart,” she recalled.
Once admitted, medical staff struggled to determine the cause. Black said she was treated for pain and given gas and air but felt her concerns were not being taken seriously. “Nobody was listening to me and I was screaming in pain all night. I was trying to hit myself in the head to knock myself out because I was in so much pain,” she said.
Subsequent scans revealed that two vertebrae in her neck, the C6 and C7, had moved forward into her spinal cord as a result of the yawn, compressing it. “I was completely paralysed down my right-hand side,” she said.
She was told she required immediate surgery. “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,” she recalled.
The operation restored her basic functions, but her spinal cord sustained lasting damage. “When I woke up, I’d had emergency surgery and they told me they’d managed to restore all my functions. It was amazing, but I was still in shock. I kept thinking, ‘I broke my neck yawning, how is that even possible?’” she said.
The consequences extended beyond her health. Black explained that her husband had to take on the role of both caregiver and single parent. “It was really hard; we even became homeless because of it. I couldn’t work, I couldn’t care for the children, and our whole world turned upside down,” she said.
She also developed fibromyalgia, a long-term condition associated with widespread pain and fatigue. “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 said.
Despite the challenges, she expressed gratitude to the team who carried out her surgery. “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,” she said.
Black now works to raise awareness of hidden disabilities and urges others to pay attention to signals from their bodies.
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