Woman Who Routinely Cracked Her Neck to Relieve Tension Suffers Stroke

It started as the kind of reflexive move most people do without thinking — a quick stretch to “pop” the neck after a long day. For KayLynne Felthager, that split-second habit spiraled into a medical emergency she never expected.

Felthager says the first sign something was off came on Jan. 4, 2023, while she was driving home from Walmart and felt a headache building. Cracking her neck was her usual response.

“It was a habit,” she says. “I would get a headache and I would immediately crack my neck.”

She remembers turning her head far to the right until she felt a crack on the left side of her neck. She emphasizes she didn’t use her hands to force it — just a stretch.

At first, it seemed harmless. She even felt a brief wave of relief. But almost right away, she says, a sharp and severe pain shot down her neck — pain that didn’t feel normal, even for a headache day.

Over the next few days, the discomfort didn’t let up. Moving her head became difficult, and she relied on over-the-counter pain medication just to function. Even as the pain lingered through the weekend, she tried to stick to her usual routine and family plans, telling herself it would pass.

Then Jan. 9 changed everything.

Felthager says she was sitting at the kitchen island doing her makeup before a date night when a sudden bright light flooded her right eye — and her vision vanished.

“I had, like, a blinding light come through my right eye, and then lost vision,” she recalls. “It was just like I could see this bright light, but nothing else out of the right side.”

She blinked hard, tried to shake it off, and even attempted to look up what might be happening — but she says she couldn’t see well enough to make sense of anything. About 15 minutes later, her vision returned, and she assumed a headache was on the way.

Still, something felt wrong. She told her husband she felt “off” as they drove into town.

Soon after, she says the entire right side of her body began tingling — and then went numb. The sensation was confusing at first, like her body was sending signals she couldn’t decode fast enough.

The moment that truly terrified her came when she tried to speak — and couldn’t. “It literally just came out, like jumbled gibberish,” Felthager says. Her husband immediately turned the car toward the emergency room.

Once they arrived, she says everything moved fast. Doctors rushed her back, nurses started an IV, and she was taken for a CT scan with contrast. Much of what followed is a blur — but she remembers how her mind clung to a single word as everything else felt unreachable.

“The only word I could honestly think of was God,” she says. “And I just, like, kept repeating that.”

She recalls doctors using picture cards to test her responses while she struggled to name what she was seeing. Gradually, she says, pieces began to return — recognizing loved ones, forming words, getting control back.

Later, Felthager says doctors explained what had happened: she’d suffered an artery dissection, and a clot had traveled to her brain, causing a stroke. She was told the clot dissolved before doctors had to intervene — something she says still makes her feel grateful.

Because she lives in a small town in Colorado, she says doctors decided she needed higher-level care and transferred her to a larger hospital by helicopter — a detail that still feels surreal to her.

At the hospital, Felthager says doctors told her artery dissections can occur in situations involving chiropractic adjustments or cracking the neck. One doctor tried to reassure her, but she remembers thinking reassurance is hard to accept once your life has just flipped.

Her neurologist also raised another possible trigger: Felthager says she’d recently had the stomach flu and had been violently sick.

“She was like, either from violently puking or from you cracking your neck, is what this happened from,” Felthager says.

Afterward, she says she was placed on strong blood thinners, then continued on aspirin while healing. For months, she followed up with regular CT scans until doctors confirmed she had fully recovered.

“Obviously, they were like, ‘Maybe stop cracking your neck,’ ” she says. “And I was like, fair. I will never again.”

Now, nearly three years later, Felthager says she feels physically healthy and back to normal — but emotionally, she says the experience changed her. She describes living with more health anxiety, where even minor vision changes can send her spiraling. She says that worry sometimes extends to her husband and kids, too, because the stroke taught her how quickly “normal” can disappear.

Since then, life has continued in joyful ways, including welcoming another baby. And unexpectedly, her story found a massive audience when she shared it on TikTok. She says it wasn’t a carefully planned warning — just a quick post she made while trying to grow her account.

“Honestly, it was just like a filler post,” she says, explaining she expected her usual few hundred views.

Instead, she watched it go viral — and with the attention came intense reactions. “Oh, my goodness, I stopped replying because I was like, I can’t handle some of these people,” she says, laughing at how overwhelming the comments became.

Looking back, Felthager says what surprised her most was how many people immediately saw themselves in her experience. She understands, she says, because she lives with that fear now, too.

And while she knows her story can sound terrifying, she insists that was never her goal.

“I don’t want to scare people,” she says. “It’s just what happened to me.”