A woman has been warned she could have been left permanently disabled after she suffered a hernia during sex.
The 36-year-old noticed an "indescribable sensation in her tailbone" while having sex. She later realised the area had swollen and turned numb before she also lost feeling in her legs.
Two days later, she took herself to the emergency department of her local hospital complaining of the numbness.
The concerned woman, from Temple, Texas, US, spoke to a doctor who diagnosed her with cauda equina syndrome (CES), which required urgent surgery or she could have become paralysed.
The cauda equina is the bundle of nerve roots that control bladder and bowel function.
She was treated and details of her injury were published in a medical journal.
The type of hernia she suffered is extremely rare with doctors noting there have been "few if any cases" of it occurring before.
In medical jargon the affliction, detailed in the Visual Journal of Emergency Medicine, was described as a "intracoital lumbar disc herniation causing cauda equina syndrome."
The poor woman also complained of not being able urinate and also complained of bowel incontinence.
Despite being alarmed by the lack of feeling and swelling, she reported that it wasn't painful.
But further medical tests realised a loss of sensation in the perineum (the area between the anus and the vulva) and parts of her legs.
An MRI scan revealed the problem with her vertebrae.
This led medics to the herniated disc which was putting significant pressure on her nerves.
The woman was treated at the Baylor Scott and White Memorial Hospital in Temple, Texas.
Before this latest journal-worthy afflicting, the woman reported a medical history of a herniated vertebral disc.
CES requires a rare surgical procedure and affects seven in 100,000 people in the US.
Symptoms include:
- Weakness or numbness in both legs
- Numbness around your genitals or anus.
- Sciatica, a shooting pain from your lower back to your feet
- Trouble peeing or incontinence
- You don't notice needing to poo or can't control when you poo
Although doctors deal with normal aflictions sometimes a patient comes in that is baffling.
A four-year-old boy went ot the doctor with tummy pain, which turned out to be a rather unusual object lodged in his bowels.
Doctors were bewildered when scans revealed the youngster had a magnetic bracelet trapped inside him after complaining of agonising stomach pains.
