So, I slept funny on Wednesday, and when I woke up and tried to move my neck it was excruciating, complete with a scream and tears. I couldn’t even get upright without help. I took a muscle relaxant, had my husband try to give me a neck massage, pain killers, and nothing helped.
On top of this, my right arm was pins and needles tingling, which made me worry.
I called my clinic, and they told me to go to the ER. They said they would call ahead and to get over as quickly as I can.
Great.
Now, I didn’t really think this was ER worthy, but I headed over. They did a CT scan, showed a degenerating disc and a pinched nerve… on the wrong side of my neck.
And. AND. This was the same ER doctor who looked at my back injury in 2013, brushed it off as a strain, and sent me home with muscle relaxants. It was actually a herniated disc. So I didn’t exactly have a lot of trust in his judgement.
And it was embarrassing. I didn’t think it was something that needed to go to the ER!
They didn’t find anything wrong, gave me a prescription for Valium (what?!?), and sent me home in a neck brace.
It was about as much fun as you would expect, and even with the brace, I couldn’t turn my head to the right at all or look up or down. There was one perfect position I could hold my head in where it only hurt and didn’t make me squeal with pain.
Like, how embarrassing is that? I couldn’t keep from making noise and near constant tears every time I tried to move.
On top of that, the med made me wobbly and dizzy, and I kept tripping over nothing and falling into things. My husband set me up with some ice cream on the couch and then had me take a nap. It wasn’t any better when I woke up, and I had to yell for help rolling over and sitting up.
So I was a total wimp and called into work which I feel horrible about. My coworker missed a doctor’s appointment because of me, and my boss never emailed me back so now I’m stressed that he’s upset with me.
I even slept in the brace. Thursday was nearly as bad, but on Friday I had regained about 15 degrees of motion to the right and could look up and down 45 degrees. So I emailed my coworker to let her know I would be in Monday.
Saturday was hard, but I was able to spend short periods of time without the brace on.
The brace, I might note, bruised the back of my neck, my shoulders, and the underside of my chin, so that looks great. Yay, EDS?
Sunday I slept without the brace (and I’m writing this Sunday even though you won’t see it until Friday), and I was able to get up and move around so long as I was slow and careful. So it has improved a ton, but this has been hugely stressful.
I still don’t know how I might have done it!
Have you ever had anything like this happen? How did you deal with it? Inquiring minds want to know.
Yeah, this happens to me. There’s not a ton to do if it doesn’t swell, apparently, just heat, painkillers and wait for it to go down. I dislocated my elbow the same way this week – thrashing in my sleep after a nightmare. Apparently injuring yoyrself while sleeping wrong is fairly common in EDS. Sucks, though.
It was a first for me, so it was alarming and then aggravating. I generally only have problems with my hips and ribs while sleeping. :/