A 28-year-old man stretches the neck, hears "pop", he suffers from a stroke

A 28-year-old Oklahoma man who is trying to extend his pain by stretching his neck has "heard an explosion," which doctors say has directly led to a stroke.

While he's used to breaking his neck, Josh Hader said he was not trying to do it when he was working from home on March 14th. He simply rolled his neck to the right to try to alleviate some of the pain he felt for a few weeks.

"I used my hand to apply a little more pressure, then I heard a sound," Hader told NBC News. "Then everything on my left side started to get numb."

The father of two and former Guthrie police officer, in Oklahoma, said that he "had somehow an idea that it could happen from one day to the next." stroke ". After calling his wife, he peeked in the mirror and was encouraged to see him face down.

But when he tried to go to the fridge to get a bag of ice cream, he said he was "walking almost 45 degrees to the left."

"I stumbled on myself trying to walk right," said Hader. "It was really impressive not being able to walk straight."

By the time his father-in-law arrived to take him to the hospital, Hader said his symptoms had "increased tenfold".

"Everything started to turn, I could hardly walk," said Hader. On the way to the Logan County Mercy Hospital emergency room, his father-in-law was struggling to support him because he was bowing so far to the left.

After a computed tomography scan, Hader learned that he had suffered a stroke caused by a blood clot, which could be treated with a tissue plasminogen activator, or tPA.

"I remember hearing a doctor in the emergency screaming at staff:" We have 12 minutes to administer this, "said Hader," That's when everything came home. "

Hader received the medication on time and was later transferred to the Mercy Hospital of Oklahoma City. It was there that he was told that he had suffered an ischemic stroke, caused by "a clot or obstruction blocking blood circulation in the brain," according to the hospital. Mercy.

The clot of Hader was caused by a small tear in a vertebral artery. He says the doctors told him that the "direct cause" of the stroke was "stretching my neck".

Doctors told him that they saw about three or four cases a year of strokes caused by a tear in the vertebral artery, mainly after car accidents or other shocks .

But "I was the only case of self-manipulation that they had ever seen," said Hader. "Great way to break a record," he added.

Hader stayed at the USI for four days and left the hospital only on March 29th. But he kept his spirits up throughout his treatment.

"Captain's log: started the second day of therapy, entered the 2019 wheelchair tournament, launched an underground bingo club, a steady diet of jelly candies," said Hader on Facebook. 39, one week after the stroke.

The next day he stated that he had "learned that I could still walk (though I was not worth as well as my one year old son)".

"I'm a little funny," said Hader, who also has a 5-year-old daughter.

"It's a traumatic event for friends and family that I feel, so I try to keep my mind sharp," he said. "I do not know if it works, but I hope it's okay."

Hader said he still suffered from vision problems caused by stroke, but was optimistic that he would be able to resume his work at Dell in the coming weeks.

Meanwhile, Mercy posted Hader's story on Facebook Thursday to warn others. "Think well before crushing your neck!" The post said, accompanied by a reminder that May is the national month of stroke awareness.

Hader said his wife, Rebecca, always told her not to break her neck because she "hated popping and she knows it's not healthy for you."

He said that the first thing he told her when he arrived at the hospital was, "I'm really sorry to crack my neck."

Now, he says, he has gotten used to it. "Usually half way to wring my neck, I'm like, 'Nope, Nope, do not do that."

But it was a difficult lesson to learn.

A vascular specialist recently told Hader that he was "extremely lucky" that the result was not worse. "He held two fingers so close to each other and said:" You were about to fall into a coma. "

Elisha Fieldstadt

Elisha Fieldstadt is a late-breaking journalist for NBC News.