My injury -
On Memorial Day Weekend of '10 I did a headstand in yoga. I'm a lifelong athlete, and I have a regular, solid yoga practice. However, I don't normally do headstands and my neck didn't take kindly to that pose. The day after the ill-fated headstand I woke up and couldn't turn my head to the right.
My symptoms -
I had moderate, diffuse pain in my neck and scapula right after my injury.
A couple months later I developed symptoms that traveled down my arm and into my hand. I had pain, numbness, tingling, buzzing sensations, and weakness along this C6 path:
My treatment before surgery -
Stuff that helped:
-oral steroids
-epidural steroid injections
-traction
-opioid medication
-anti-seizure medication*
*Neurontin was tremendously helpful with my nerve pain, but I gained a whopping 13lbs while taking it, so that part of the med was awful.
Stuff that made it worse:
-physical therapy (everything but the manual traction)
-acupuncture
Stuff that made no difference at all:
-non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medication
-muscle relaxant medication
-wearing a soft cervical collar
-heat
-ice
-massage
I would be hesitant to recommend oral steroids for anything but immediate pain relief. My mother suffered from rheumatoid arthritis and took oral steroids as a last result; the pain dissipated but the flipside was that the steroids accelerated the onset of osteoporosis and she endured crumbling vertebrae and four back surgeries in two years.
ReplyDelete@anon - just to be crystal clear, i'm not recommending anything here. i am simply sharing with others what worked/didn't work for me. all of these medications and treatments are serious stuff that should be discussed with your treating physician(s).
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