pain in the neck

i want my neck back, i really do. it’s strange how almost disabling it feels when you don’t have a functioning neck. and it’s not like where you have two hands or two legs you can rely more on the other for awhile. all i did was wake up a week ago, not in an awkward position, and there was a strange spot of pain in the brain. saw the doc after lunch since it wasn’t going away and was bit worried it was the end. good news that the head wasn’t the problem but the neck was. supposedly simple neck sprain on the left side, nothing serious. pain in brain was because the nerve running along the injured part of the neck ended at that spot in the brain and that was the thing hurting. i was so relieved i probably aggravated it by still moving about quite normally after that. then there’s the other theory that i might not have realised i could be aggravating it because my pain threshold seems rather high. there’s another theory too that the fengshui in my office is not very good. after i was sick couple of weeks back and half the office was also on mc and someone even had hfmd, now this.

so it was pretty much downhill from there on. after that the right side started hurting on the front and the back. good thing there was a long weekend but sadly that meant no fun for me and i had to skip two weddings i was eager to attend. decided to see th doc again for a review on mon. good thing i did, his face went graver. he was surprised the seemingly simple sprain had become something acute, in more than one spot, inflammed, and totally stiffened up my neck. so i was ordered an xray at the nearest hospital and, depending on the results, would also go for physiotherapy the same day. if the results were good, that meant i could just go for physio. if they were bad, that meant even physio wouldn’t help and my doc would need to call me back to tell me more. and he wouldn’t tell me anything earlier. hmmmm….

anyway good news is xray came back clean. nothing untoward looking, no fractures. so physio it was and a neck brace. and thanks to swine flu/ influenza a h1n1 season i had my temperature screened three times in one day going to clinic, hospital and physio. and since everything was private and not public medical, mon alone cost me about 200 bucks already. physio alone is 75 bucks a pop, but it’s 1.5 hrs at least and they’re good. so good it hurts. really. after just  two sessions i’ve been able to move my neck the most normally since i got the damn sprain a week ago. but it’s still work in progress. ain’t 100% yet. and i have to lay off yoga for a couple of months. sucks.

but i’m glad at least now i can swallow, brush my teeth and wash my hair more normally without having to hold my head at the same time at some funny angle. i’m still working on being able to wash my face at the sink properly though. it’s amazing how you take something so seemingly insignificant like your neck and with just an injury like that, it changes almost everything. i haven’t really been out for a week. and i still have to wear the brace when i go back to work. there’s really so much, or rather almost everything, to do with which you could use a functioning neck. good thing physio says i should be able to make total recovery; doc doesn’t think this will become recurring. but it is gonna take longer than it takes a normal sprain to heal. my physio is totally puzzled how i got this, as i am too. she said the kind of injury i have is more consistent with some sudden accident that happened, like whiplash in a car, not something that hits you from wear and tear over time which would be gradual.

apparently the neck joints near my head were quite inflammed, she was concerned that it might have affected the discs too although not by way of slipped discs. but i did learn some other interesting things from physio also. apparently she can tell i have migraines, just by feeling the back of the skull where the hairline is. cool. apparently only about 0.5% of migraine sufferers are those who start since early childhood. swell. and she says my shoulders and left side of my back are too stiff too. so this means i should hit the spa more often? she laughed.

she thinks yoga is good though from her professional point of view, so that’s good. as for chinese treatments where they stick glass jars on your back and try to suck the ‘bad’ air out she feels it’s kinda hokey. she did try it herself and it didn’t really do anything. someone else also told me that personal trainers in gyms always tell their clients that yoga is actually bad. afraid of having business snatched, i would say. hilarious.