Teen Dies After Receiving a Hickey From His Girlfriend

A 17-year-old boy from Mexico City has died after a hickey on his neck led to a blood clot that traveled to his brain, ​Hoy Estado de Mexico ​and ​the ​Daily Mail ​report.​

Julio Macias Gonzalez's 24-year-old girlfriend left a mark on his neck from kissing it. Later, he began having strong convulsions while at home with his family. His relatives called for medical help, but paramedics were unable to save him. His cause of death was determined to be a stroke.

"This situation is unheard of in my career," Dr. Julian Orenstein, a pediatric emergency physician in Maryland who has been practicing for more than 25 years, told Seventeen.com. "Strokes under the age of 18 are entirely uncommon. In the extremely few cases of stroke that I've encountered, all the circumstances were random. It's not like a blow to the head or neck will cause a stroke — it's thoroughly random."

He noted that the most pressing sign of a stroke is a "thunderclap headache, in other words, a headache that is so incapacitating, severe, and sudden that there is no mistaking this for anything but a life or death crisis."

This is the second known instance of a hickey causing a stroke. In 2011, a 44-year-old New Zealand woman suffered a non-fatal stroke after receiving a hickey on her neck. At the time, researchers referred to the incident as a "rare phenomenon," TIME reports.​

​Via