Did you really need another reason not to give your girlfriend a hickey? Here's one: A New Zealand woman was partially paralyzed after receiving a "lovebite" from her partner, reports a New Zealand news site. When the 44-year-old visited the emergency room at Middlemore Hospital in Auckland, she was unable to move her left arm. Her only other injury: the hickey on the right side of her neck.
An unfortunate chain of events followed: The hickey was covering an artery, and all the sucking it takes to create a hickey caused some bruising inside the blood vessel, resulting in a clot. That clot went into the woman's heart, triggering a minor stroke -- hence her frozen arm.
Doctors treated her with an anticoagulant, and her clot almost completely disappeared within a week.
Hickeys: as dangerous as they are gross, according to science.
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