A nurse suffered a life-threatening stroke after her first visit to a chiropractor to deal with her stiff neck.
Maria Bond, 29, said she became “super dizzy” after her neck was “cracked” in both directions, according to Unilad.
“It cracked both ways and I’d seen chiropractor videos so I thought it was normal but when I stood up I got super dizzy,” she said, adding that she was also “throwing up constantly.”
Ms Bond’s hand started to tingle, and the chiropractor told her to go to urgent care.
“I called my husband because there was no way I was going to drive and I had no idea what was going on,” she said, per Unilad.
Following several scans, it was revealed that Ms Bond, a dental assistant from New Mexico, had suffered a stroke in the cerebellum, the part of the brain controlling movement and balance.
“[The vomiting] was nonstop. I couldn’t open my eyes because if I did I’d start throwing up because I was so dizzy,” she said, according to Unilad. “I was transferred via ambulance to another hospital where they did a CT scan and confirmed that I was having a stroke.”
Per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), someone has a stroke in the US every 40 seconds, causing a death every three and a half minutes.
Each year, “more than 795,000 people in the United States have a stroke” and “about 610,000 of these are first or new strokes,” according to the agency.
Ms Bond said the chiropractor cracking her neck tore her artery, leading to her brain being shut off from blood.
“I was shocked because I’m so young and you don’t really hear about young people having strokes, especially from the chiropractor,” she said, according to Unilad.
She spent five days in the hospital, and she noted that she “couldn’t walk properly or correctly use my hands to eat, it was like I was a child, it was very weird, my brain was there but I couldn’t do it”.
“My first stroke was a cerebral stroke and they were saying that I probably had a mini-stroke as I was having weird feelings in my legs. They were very confused because that wasn’t common with the stroke I had, so they said that I probably had two,” she said, according to Unilad.
She could walk again after two weeks but spent two months doing physiotherapy before going back to work. The artery had fully healed by June.
“I had my last neurosurgery appointment and he cleared me but said that I have to take aspirin for the rest of my life, just in case,” she said.
“I was very strong-willed at the time because everyone was telling me how well I was handling this. I think my husband was more scared than I was, poor thing,” she said, according to Unilad.
Following her ordeal, Ms Bond is urging others to avoid chiropractors.
“I’ve already told a million people not to do it,” she said. “Just don’t go or at least don’t let them do your neck.”
Symptoms of a stroke include weakness or numbness on one side of the body, struggling to find the right words, blurred vision or a loss of vision, a sudden sense of confusion, dizziness, or feeling unsteady.
Other symptoms include a sudden strong headache, struggling to understand what people are saying, and having a hard time swallowing.
