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Neck things
Apr. 2nd, 2014 11:13 amSo two years ago I had a herniated disc in my neck that caused something like 3 weeks of unending neck pain, shoulder stiffness, and my left arm eventually going dead, which sucked. I did medication for it (anti-inflammatories and muscle relaxants) and after 2 months everything seemed to have healed itself. I think in theory I was supposed to do some therapy except that since my arm kind of got its strength back naturally anyway, I didn't worry about it.
2 days ago, in the middle of the Sunday-Monday morning, I woke up in the middle of the night with neck pain. It didn't stop for the rest of the night, and felt an awful lot like it did last time I had this problem. I got up, took some Advil, made an appointment at the medical center here at Google. When I got home later that evening (I'd slept in Menlo Park for most of the weekend) I found my super-strong anti-inflammatory pills from 2 years ago and took one of them, and I put an extra pillow under my neck and slept pretty decently Monday night.
Tuesday afternoon the doctor told me that basically, once you have a ruptured disc in your neck, it's common to have relapses every now and then if you're not careful, and that I was doing the right thing by taking the anti-inflammatories. She wrote me a new prescription for them, printed out a sheet of some orthopedists in the area, and basically told me to see whether things got worse in the next week or two, and if they do, go to an orthopedist and get an MRI and a new diagnosis.
I guess the worry is that since it's a recurrence -- it's possible that I didn't really truly heal up the first time. Or whatever. I'm just worried because they told me the first time that in severe cases, they do surgery and reinforce your neck discs with metal, and that just sounds awful, both the surgery and the metal. I'm not sure what to do about this though as it sounds like it's basically just a degenerative condition that I can't *really* do much about except try not to do things that strain my neck. :(
2 days ago, in the middle of the Sunday-Monday morning, I woke up in the middle of the night with neck pain. It didn't stop for the rest of the night, and felt an awful lot like it did last time I had this problem. I got up, took some Advil, made an appointment at the medical center here at Google. When I got home later that evening (I'd slept in Menlo Park for most of the weekend) I found my super-strong anti-inflammatory pills from 2 years ago and took one of them, and I put an extra pillow under my neck and slept pretty decently Monday night.
Tuesday afternoon the doctor told me that basically, once you have a ruptured disc in your neck, it's common to have relapses every now and then if you're not careful, and that I was doing the right thing by taking the anti-inflammatories. She wrote me a new prescription for them, printed out a sheet of some orthopedists in the area, and basically told me to see whether things got worse in the next week or two, and if they do, go to an orthopedist and get an MRI and a new diagnosis.
I guess the worry is that since it's a recurrence -- it's possible that I didn't really truly heal up the first time. Or whatever. I'm just worried because they told me the first time that in severe cases, they do surgery and reinforce your neck discs with metal, and that just sounds awful, both the surgery and the metal. I'm not sure what to do about this though as it sounds like it's basically just a degenerative condition that I can't *really* do much about except try not to do things that strain my neck. :(
