It was an unusually tight-lipped call for help.



The frightened woman on the phone could only grunt as she pleaded for an ambulance to be sent to her home.



The 111 call, about midnight yesterday, sparked fears that the 64-year-old from Dunedin was being held captive, but it turned out she had accidentally super-glued her lips together.



"Ambulance received a call, but due to the muffled speech ... they were unsure whether it was a medical event or whether someone had been gagged," Senior Sergeant Steve Aitken said.



"Basically, she could only grunt."



Ambulance staff called the police, who went to the woman's home and found that she had mistakenly applied super-glue to her lips instead of her normal medication.



"She got up in the middle of the night, in the dark, and grabbed what she thought was the tube of medication," Aitken said.



"It was an extremely frightening event for her because her breathing was impeded.



"I've heard of a few other things super-glued, but never lips.



"You wouldn't have wanted to have had a blocked nose."



The woman was taken to hospital and has since been released.