As if the drugmaker doesn’t have enough problems. Now, a team of Canadian surgeons report being shocked when a patient they were operating on began shedding dark greenish-black blood, according to The Lancet.

The strange color was due to large doses of the migraine med he was taking, 200 milligrams a day. Despite the surprise, the man’s leg surgery went ahead successfully and his blood returned to normal once he gave up the Imitrex, the BBC reports. Naturally, comparisons are being made with Mr. Spock of Star Trek fame, the science officer who had green Vulcan blood.

This caused a rare condition called sulfhaemoglobinaemia. The docs from St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver wrote in The Lancet: “The patient recovered uneventfully, and stopped taking sumatriptan after discharge. When seen five weeks after his last dose, he was found to have no sulfhaemoglobin in his blood.” Cause and effect?

For patients, this raises a different challenge: would one rather have a migraine or green blood?

The man needed urgent surgery after developing a dangerous condition in his legs caused by falling asleep in a sitting position. The surgeons performed limb-saving procedures that require surgical incisions to relieve pressure and swelling caused by compartment syndrome in which restricted space limits blood flow, resulting in tissue and nerve damage.

For those who don’t know Star Trek lore, Spock had green blood because the oxidizing agent in Vulcan blood is copper, not iron, as it is in humans. Mr Spock had a human mother, and Vulcan father, from who he inherited his inability to make sense of human emotion, as well as his green blood.

Hat tip to KevinMD