California woman left permanently disabled after a chiropractor visit

A 33-year-old woman suffered three strokes and was left permanently disabled after a chiropractic adjustment. The woman is now urging people to see a real doctor if they have any health concerns. “Go to the hospital,” she said.
In December 2021, Jaycie Conley, a 33-year-old stay-at-home mother from Ventura, California, started experiencing persistent headaches. A new mum with a six-month-old boy, she thought the headache was due to stress and sleep deprivation.

“I remember thinking I slept wrong, like I’d kinked my neck or something, so I let it go for a couple of days, but the pain was getting worse, so I contacted a chiropractor that I’d worked with before,” she told the Daily Mail.

So she visited the chiropractor and had some neck adjustments. A few hours after the visit, Conley felt nauseous. “My eyes went cross-eyed by themselves,” she recalled. She immediately texted the chiropractor, who asked her to return for another adjustment. The chiropractor told Conley, “it could be you’re just having a weird reaction”.

“The chiropractor said, ‘I’d rather see you than not.’ So that’s why I went back the second time,” the woman recalled. “She said if it keeps happening, go to the doctor. She said that several times. It was alarming the way she wasn’t alarmed.” However, Conley didn’t know it was urgent, as the chiropractor never mentioned it. But her symptoms didn’t go away, so she decided to go to the hospital. The doctors ordered an MRI scan. She had suffered a bilateral vertebral artery dissection (VAD), a serious condition in which tears occur in the walls of both arteries supplying blood to the brain. It is a life-threatening condition that can often cause an ischaemic stroke.

Conley’s symptoms were the result of two mini-strokes, called transient ischaemic attacks (TIAs), that she had suffered. According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, TIAs are often warning signs that a person is at risk of a more serious and debilitating stroke.

Later, she suffered a third and more severe stroke in the hospital, following which she was in the ICU for five days. The doctors told her the bilateral VAD was likely from the ‘velocity’ of the chiropractor’s neck adjustment.

“I was completely shocked that going to a chiropractor had contributed to this. I thought, ‘I’m 33, how could this happen?’ To be 33 and basically be an elderly person in the ICU, not able to use my hands, not able to stand up and walk, not able to use the bathroom on my own, that really did a number on my psyche for a while,” she said.

The series of events worried the new mum. “I was terrified my child might not have had a mum. I couldn’t lift my son, and I had a hard time being a stay-at-home parent. That put a lot of stress on our family.”

The ordeal has left her permanently disabled. Conley suffers from weakness on the right side of her body. She also has speech difficulties. Now 38, Conley is warning others about the potential downsides of visiting a chiropractor.

“Chiropractors are trained to look for and learn about strokes. They even make you sign a waiver that it is a risk, but no one pays attention to it. I signed a waiver, not knowing what I was signing. That’s not education; that’s not fully informed consent,” she said.

She added, “I feel angry and disappointed. I just hope somebody learns what I didn’t learn prior to this.” The woman also urged people to go to medical doctors when they have any health issues. “If you have a headache and you’re postpartum, go to the hospital. If there’s any part of this I can promote, it’s to be aware of what it is and the severity.”