A TERRIFIED woman suffered a rare complication to Botox, which paralysed her neck muscles the point she was choking on her spit and couldn’t lift her own head.
Alicia Hallock, 36, had had Botox injections to treat her migraines for five years before experiencing “scary” side effects after the muscle freezing drug spread to her neck.
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In February, the mum posted a picture of her arm hooked up to an IV drip to her Instagram, sharing she’d been admitted to hospital after getting her usual treatment.
“It’s been a scary week to say the least,” Alicia wrote.
“I ended up having a rare complication from my Botox injections for my migraines.
“It spread to muscles in my neck and now it’s created many issues. My eyelids are droopy, causing a lot of pressure, blurry vision, and dizziness.
“The muscles in my neck are essentially paralysed so I can’t lift my own head.
“I have to wear a neck brace to help hold my head upright. I just kind of bobble around without it.”
Alicia also experienced an even more terrifying side effect from her Botox injection,
“It’s also caused dysphagia, which has been the scariest part of all this,” she wrote.
“I experienced a couple of days where I was choking on sips of water and even my own saliva.”
Dysphagia describes when you have difficulty swallowing, usually caused by certain medicines or conditions like acid reflux or a stroke.
It can result in symptoms like:
- Coughing or choking when eating or drinking
- Bringing food back up, sometimes through the nose
- A feeling that food is stuck in your throat or chest
- A gurgly, wet-sounding voice when eating or drinking
Alicia shared that she’d been moved to the ICU to be under constant supervision and had “tubes shoved down my throat to get up all the mucus that’s stuck in my lungs and throat”.
“I can barely talk. It’s slurred and hoarse,” the mum went on.
“They’re having a speech therapist come in to try and help retrain the muscles and see what we can do for my vocal cords.”
Alicia said she’d been going to the same nurse practitioner at a neurology clinic for nearly five years, at three month intervals.
The popular anti-wrinkle drug had helped relieve her migraines and have never caused issues before.
The alarming symptoms struck after the nurse injected Botox in a specific muscle in her neck for the first time.
But doctors weren’t sure why the Botox spread or why she suddenly reacted so badly.
Ms Hallock started feeling symptoms such as a stiff neck within three days of the injections, which gradually got worse over the next week.
She said she “stupidly” waited nine days to go to hospital, where she was admitted to the ICU straight away.
‘Horrifying scary, and completely defeating’
Alicia checked back in with another update a few days later, sharing that she “temporarily stopped breathing” after doctors tried to suction the mucus out of her throat.
“They had to bag me to bring my oxygen levels back up and to keep me from blacking out. It was super scary,” she wrote.
“I’m relatively okay now, but I am on oxygen. I’ve had a few less severe episodes since then.”
Doctors were worried Alicia might develop botulism – a very rare but life-threatening condition caused by toxins that attack the nerves, brain and spinal cord and cause paralysis.
Using Botox for migraines
BOTOX is a type of a type of nerve toxin that paralyses muscles comes from a bacterium known as Clostridium botulinum.
It’s regularly used to stop wrinkles forming but is also licenced as a a treatment for chronic migraine in the UK for adults.
It’s not clear why Botox is effective in migraine, according to the Migraine Trust.
However, doctors think it works by blocking chemicals called neurotransmitters that carry pain signals from within your brain.
Botox aims to reduce how often you have migraine attacks and how severe they are.
Most people have at least two treatment cycles before deciding if Botox is effective.
Though it’s generally well tolerated, sometimes it can cause side effects like neck pain, muscular weakness and drooping of the eyelid.
These side effects are temporary because the treatment wears off over time.
Botox is only available on the NHS for people with chronic migraine who have tried at least three other preventive treatments.
Botulism can be caused by eating food containing clostridium botulinum bacteria that produce highly poisonous toxins.
But in Alicia’s case, doctors feared her migraine treatment might cause the sometimes fatal condition, as the medicine in Botox injections is made from the same toxin that causes botulism.
The forms of botulinum toxin used by licensed health care providers are purified meet medical control standards.
Alicia said: “One doctor had treated food-borne botulism, but not one person involved in my care had ever seen this from Botox injections.”
She said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had sent a special botulism antitoxin to try and reduce the effects.
She was also placed on a feeding tube so she can be given medication and soft foods.
A disheartened Alicia wrote: “This has been horrifying and scary, and completely defeating.
“There have been times when I’ve sobbed hysterically and told Brian, my mum, and my nurses, I don’t know how to walk through this. I don’t think I can.”
Thankfully, the mum was discharged from hospital after 18 days and went home to continue recovering.
“I will do some basic exercises at home but won’t be able to safely restart physical therapy and outpatient therapy until four to six weeks from now once the Botox starts wearing off more and I can actually use and rebuild strength in my neck muscles,” she explained.
After a week at home, the mum shared that she’d been doing “pretty good” and had been managing to swallow soups and mashed potatoes.
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Still wearing her neck brace, she thanked her followers for their concern.
Because Alicia’s reaction to the Botox was so rare, the hospital is doing a case study on her case.
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