Many of us who end up with a hickey have one big concern — how do we cover it up? A teenage boy in Mexico City, MX experienced a significantly more serious after-effect, a fatal stroke. Julio Macias Gonzalez, 17, suffered a stroke while eating dinner with family, shortly after hanging out with his 24-year-old girlfriend, before he died.

Doctors believe the stroke may have been triggered by the hickey Gonzalez received from his girlfriend earlier that day, according to Hoy Estado de Mexico, a local newspaper in Mexico. The suction of the hickey caused a blood clot, which then traveled to Gonzalez's brain and led to the stroke.

Thrombotic strokes occur when a blood clot forms in one of the arteries that supply blood to the brain. A clot may be caused by fatty deposits (plaque) that build up in arteries, and cause reduced blood flow (atherosclerosis) or other artery conditions, according to the Mayo Clinic. When the clot blocks the blood flow to the heart or the brain, a heart attack or stroke can follow.

Gonzalez's case is one of two hickey-induced stroke cases reported. In a 2010 report published in the New Zealand Medical Journal, a 44-year-old woman in New Zealand went to the ER because she couldn't move her left arm. Doctors were puzzled by her symptoms until they spotted a clot in an artery on the right side of her neck beneath where she showed the bruising of a hickey. Luckily, she recovered after being treated with a blood thinner.

It seems like love does bite.

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