A 36-year-old woman in the UK was reportedly in need of emergency surgery, suffering a severe neck injury after yawning.

According to reports, the woman identified as Hayley Black experienced a medical emergency while tending to her young daughter. It’s understood that after seeing her baby’s yawn, she instinctively followed, after which she then felt an “electric shock sensation” shoot through her body, leaving her arm stuck in the air.

Realising something was wrong, Mrs Black immediately alerted her husband to her plight, who then contacted an ambulance. It’s further understood that it was only after scans of the woman that the doctors realised that her C6 and C7 bones in her neck had “shot forward into her spine”

“It was crazy. The C6 and C7 had shot forward into my spine when I yawned [due to] the force of the yawn. They said it was such a freak incident,” Mrs Black recalled on TikTok. “My mum told me [the doctor] said ‘it’s a 50/50 whether she’s going to walk and potentially survive.”

Fortunately for the relatively new mom, doctors were able to successfully perform surgery in time, mitigating life-threatening harm. She, however, did unfortunately suffer some nerve damage and scarring of her trachea, she adds.

I’m still struggling with the nerve damage today. I often get pains going down my arms, shooting down my back, and up into my neck and my head,” the 36-year-old said. “I can’t yawn without panic, and any yawn I try to stifle – it still affects me to this day.