A New Zealand woman was temporarily partially paralyzed by a hickey on her neck from her amorous partner, AFP reported Friday.

The 44-year-old woman went to the emergency department of Middlemore Hospital in Auckland last year after experiencing loss of movement in her left arm while watching television, doctors reported in the New Zealand Medical Journal.

Doctors concluded the woman had suffered a mild stroke but were puzzled about its cause until they found a small vertical bruise on her neck near a major artery, a hickey, she received a few days earlier.

"Because it was a love bite there would be a lot of suction," one of the doctors who treated her, Teddy Wu, told the Christchurch Press.

"Because of the physical trauma it had made a bit of bruising inside the vessel. There was a clot in the artery underneath where the hickey was."

Wu said the clot dislodged and traveled to the woman’s heart, where it caused a minor stroke that led to the loss of movement.

"We looked around the medical literature and that example of having a love bite causing something like that hasn’t been described before," he said.

The medic said the woman recovered after being treated with an anti-coagulant.

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10 Billionth App

27th January 2011 Joey Lau 1 Comment

My sister was asking me if we were going to take part in the Apple 10 billionth app competition to win a $10,000 iTunes Gift Card.

Was reading the news in my feed reader and found this article:

$10K iTunes Winner Hung Up On Apple, Thought It Was a Prank

Gail Davis of Orpington Kent hung up the phone when Apple called to say she’d won a $10,000 iTunes gift card. She thought it was a prank call.

The winner of the Apple’s 10 billionth App download sweepstakes nearly made a horrible mistake: she hung up the phone when Apple called to say she’d won.

“I thought it was a prank call,” says Gail Davis of Orpington, Kent, UK. “I said, ‘Thank you very much, I’m not interested’ and I hung up.”

Speaking exclusively to CultofMac.com, Davis says it was actually one of her two daughters who downloaded the 10 billionth app, winning the family a $10,000 iTunes gift card. Her daughters, 14 and 17, had downloaded several apps in the morning. One of them, the free Paper Glider app, was the magic 10 billionth app.

“The girls came down and said it wasn’t a prank,” Davis explains. “I had a moment of panic.”

Davis tried to ring Apple back, but got an ~~clueless~~ operator on the company’s helpdesk, who was ultimately unable to help.

“The more I thought about it, the more I realized it was a genuine call,” she says. “The girls were getting quite tense. They never would have forgiven me. They would have held it against me for all eternity.”

Luckily, an Apple executive rang back a couple of hours later.

“I was hugely relieved,” says Davis. “I was getting really worried.”

The first call was from Eddy Cue, Apple’s VP of iTunes. The second call was from one of Cue’s colleagues.

“If it had been Steve Jobs I definitely would have thought it was a wind up,” said Davis.

What are they going to do with the windfall? Download more apps, of course.

Davis says her daughters are already planning which apps to download for their iPod touches. Davis and her husband don’t currently have iPods that can run apps. “We’re thinking of upgrading our nanos so we can join the party,” she said.

Davis’ daughter downloaded the 10 billionth app at about 9.30AM UK time, or 1.30AM PST/4.30AM EST.