S'porean banker becomes half-paralysed after neck massage

SINGAPORE - After a particularly painful neck massage, a 40-year-old banker from Singapore suffered a stroke and became a paraplegic consequentially.
Mr Lin claims that his doctors suspect that the excessive force used in the massage broke a blood vessel and resulted in a stroke.
He is now deaf in one ear and is undergoing therapy to regain movement in the left half of his body, Chinese Daily Lianhe Wanbao reported.

According to the paper, Mr Lin is an assistant director of a department in a bank, and was in China recently to visit some friends.
There, he visited a massage parlour to get a foot massage. Upon the therapist's recommendation, he decided to try a neck massage instead.
After the massage, he felt okay. But three days later, he suddenly felt a sharp pain in the left side of his head, and woke up to find that his left ear was deaf.
He also couldn't move the left side of his body, and was unsteady in his gait.
He recalled: "I felt very afraid. It all happened so fast, it was really like a bolt from the blue."
As he was not in condition to be moved, he could not return home immediately for treatment. Mr Lin was sent to a hospital in Hong Kong and hospitalised for about two weeks until doctors deemed him fit for a flight home.
Mr Lin told the Chinese Daily that his doctors suspect that when he underwent the neck massage, the massage therapist tore the vascular wall of an artery accidentally by using too much force.
The damage resulted in the blockage of the artery passage, causing the blood flow to be disrupted.