Love is blind. But it can also be blinding — as one unfortunate man has discovered after losing the sight in one eye during the throes of passion.
The cause, say doctors, was a blood vessel in his eye that ruptured because of a sudden spike in blood pressure triggered by the patient simultaneously tensing his stomach muscles, straining and holding his breath.
But, as John Naish reports, blindness isn’t the only terrible injury Cupid can inflict. The medical world has recorded a catalogue of romance-related catastrophes that can leave ardent lovers deaf, paralysed, clinically depressed — or even dead. And when you’ve read about them, you might even conclude celibacy isn’t so bad after all.
John Naish collated the most unexpected injuries that lovers can experience from permanent hearing loss caused by kissing to nerve damage from love bites
LOVE-BITE PARALYSIS
Love-bites aren’t only unsightly, they can also cause serious nerve damage, temporary paralysis and even stroke.
Finnish neurologists first identified the peril in 1980, after treating a young man admitted to hospital complaining of a paralysed left shoulder and a dull ache down his arm.
When the doctors noticed his fresh love-bite, the patient admitted that his girlfriend, overcome with passion, had sunk her teeth into his neck. The medics reported in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry that it appeared to be ‘a rather vigorous bite’.
They also noted that the paralysis and pain set in immediately following the bite, and that the patient’s passion had ceased abruptly.
The bite had crushed the nerve in the trapezius muscle (which covers most of the upper back and the rear of the neck) and damaged the front edge of the muscle itself. This caused weakness and pain that lasted six months.
In 2014, Norwegian casualty doctors reported that a love-bite on the left side of a 35-year-old woman’s neck had caused her to suffer a stroke after the bite crushed an artery in her neck.
A DEAFENING SMOOCH
A passionate kiss can mean kissing goodbye to your hearing. Such was the fate of a woman from Guangdong province in southern China, who turned up at her local hospital’s casualty department complaining of sudden deafness.
The cause was discovered when the woman, who was in her 20s, described sharing a passionate goodbye kiss the day before with her departing boyfriend.
Dr Levi Reiter has identified more than 30 victims of hearing loss from kissing worldwide (file image)
‘The kiss reduced the pressure in the mouth, pulled the eardrum out and caused the breakdown of the ear,’ the hospital told the China Daily newspaper.
Fortunately, her hearing returned after two months.
Permanent hearing damage can also be caused by being kissed directly on the ear. The suction can damage the eardrum and dislocate tiny bones, causing a condition called cochlear ear-kiss injury.
Dr Levi Reiter, a professor of audiology at Hofstra University in the U.S., has identified more than 30 ear-kiss victims worldwide. One of them is Joe Fields, an 82-year-old jazz producer from Long Island. A smacker on the ear a few years ago left him with a host of problems.
He told NBC News in 2012: ‘It’s like hearing through a screen of some sort. In the kissy ear, speech is totally muffled.’
FUMBLER’S FINGER
Fiddly bra clasps have proved the comedy downfall of many a tryst. Surveys show as many as 40 per cent of men in their 30s and 40s have problems removing a bra. In one test, it took men an average of 27 seconds to remove a bra using both hands. One volunteer took 20 minutes.
But such cack-handedness can have serious consequences. Hapless lotharios have even ended up in A&E suffering from major ligament damage or broken bones in their hands.
Hand surgeon Andrew Fleming has seen a number of men injured whilst trying to undo their partners bra (file image)
Hand surgeon Andrew Fleming highlighted the problem with the story of a 27-year-old man who arrived in casualty needing surgery on a broken left middle finger.
The injury had occurred following ‘a convivial and alcoholic evening with an attractive female companion’, said Mr Fleming in the British Journal of Plastic Surgery.
‘While attempting to undo her bra, he caught his left middle finger between the double straps that extended to the left breast.’
The result? A torn and busted finger.
LOVER’S KNEE
Unless you’re an Olympic gymnast, it’s best to approach the Kama Sutra with a degree of caution.
Adopting unusual positions can cause nasty knee damage — a condition known medically as Genu amoris.
The risk was first identified in the case of a 31-year-old woman who suffered mystery knee pains for a year.
Eventually, they grew so severe that she had to quit her job and give up her hobby of cycling.
Unusual positions in the bedroom can cause prolonged knee pain (file image)
Arthritis specialist Dr Robert S. Pinals, of Rutgers University in the U.S., was searching desperately for a cause when he asked his patient about her bedroom habits. ‘Always on my knees,’ she replied.
The patient and her partner had first tried the position a year previously and liked it so much they subsequently indulged ‘several times a day… often on a hard surface,’ reported Dr Pinals.
‘Abandonment of this position was recommended. With some reluctance the patient agreed,’ he reports.
‘Two months later, she said the knee pain had almost completely disappeared.’
Dr Pinals concluded that while the prevalence of Genu amoris cannot be accurately estimated, ‘in view of the expanding popular interest in sexual variegation, more cases will certainly be encountered.’
ADULTERER’S HEART
Many men would not wish to be seen dead committing adultery. Unfortunately, the odds aren’t entirely in their favour — married men engaging in affairs have an increased risk of ‘sudden coital death’ from heart attacks.
The list of men reputed to have died in the arms of their mistresses includes Pope John XII, 19th-century French president Felix Faure, and the former American vice-president Nelson Rockefeller.
Sudden coital death can occur from stress according to a physio-pathologist at Florence University (file image)
South Korean pathologists who studied 14 cases of married male victims of sudden coital death found that only one had actually been with his wife.
Dr Alessandra Fisher, a physio-pathologist at Florence University in Italy, warns: ‘Extra-marital sex may be hazardous and stressful because the lover is often younger than the partner, and probably sex occurs more often following excessive drinking and/or eating.’
POST-SEX BLUES. . .
A lack of excitement can also be dangerous. Around a third of woman are reported to suffer from depression-inducing levels of disappointment after lovemaking.
A study of 222 young Australian women in 2011 found a third had suffered from ‘post-coital dysphoria’ — otherwise known as ‘post-sex blues’ — at some time. But 10 per cent experienced it after most love-making sessions.
‘Under normal circumstances, sexual activity elicits sensations of well-being,’ say Brian Bird and Robert Schweitzer, psychologists at Queensland University of Technology.
But post-sex blues can leave sufferers feeling tearful, depressed or argumentative. The psychologists note: ‘Clinical research shows the dysphoria always occurs after sexual intercourse and not before or during.’
. . . AND AMNESIA
Given all these dangers, perhaps it’s best to forget the whole thing. Of course some people occasionally have little or no memory of casual sex because they were so drunk when it took place. But there is also such a thing as post-coital amnesia.
The condition first came to light in the case of a Japanese woman who developed sudden memory loss and confusion (called transient global amnesia) after having sex. She knew neither where she was nor who she was.
Brain specialists who studied her speculated that it may have been sparked when her blood pressure, heightened during passion, dropped rapidly in the aftermath, causing a temporary fall in the brain’s oxygen supply.
But not all cases have been explained. Doctors at the West London Neurosciences Centre examined a 64-year-old man whose wife complained he had suffered bouts of serious amnesia after sex on five occasions.
He would repeatedly ask questions such as ‘What are we doing?’, ‘What time of year is it?’, and ‘What time is it?’. This typically lasted from 30 to 60 minutes. Brain scans showed nothing that could explain the problem and the cause remained a mystery.