Pain in the neck

For the past couple of years, I’ve been having problems with headaches. Some lasted a few hours, the worst went on for a couple of months. Along with the headaches I’d get knots in my shoulders, pains darting into my back, throbbing from the base of my skull, and an odd sniffing reflex.

First I ignored them, thinking they were visible signs of invisible stress. They didn’t go away. Then I read about headaches and computer monitors, thought about the head tipping required with my usual bifocals, and invested in single-vision computer glasses. Work was more comfortable, but the headaches continued. Looking up on the top shelf of the grocery store would set one off; some mornings I’d wake up with one; on other days it wouldn’t set in until the evening.

Nearly every day I’d have some kind of pain — neck, eyes, sinuses, across the top of my head, along my temples, down my back, always somewhere. The last one continued for two months, and after finding myself sitting in a meeting, holding my head, and apologizing for not being able to concentrate on what everyone was saying because I’d had the same headache since August, I finally decided to go to the doctor. This is always a last resort, because I’m self-aware enough to recognize my own hypochondria. Though blessed with good health, I’m also hyperaware of every little blip that my body goes through — I have to filter out the useful from the normal, and have poor judgment in figuring out what needs to be attended to.

My doctor immediately referred me to a neurologist. She was “worried” about the throbbing at the base of my skull. The neurologist, however, diagnosed it as the common occipital headache, and put me on medication. The muscle relaxants were, as always, quite nice in the beginning, but eventually left me depressed and unfocused. The anti-inflammatories created stomach problems — a serious obstacle for someone who has a phobia about throwing up. After several unpleasant weeks of side effects and continuing headaches I asked to be taken off the medication so I could try acupuncture instead. Years before it had knocked out a persistent case of sciatica, so it seemed a far better choice than these meds.

One hour of acupuncture: No headache. Though they’d return, they never lasted long and were far less painful. After a couple of months of treatment, the pain was contained to specific areas in my neck, and no longer interfered significantly with my life.

But just in time for the six-month followup with the neurologist, the pain started in again. Sometimes it felt like hot needles laid across my spine, other times my shoulders felt hard pinches that wouldn’t ease for long minutes at a time, and one 3am I awoke feeling a spike going directly from the base of my skull to my sinus. The neurologist prescribed more medication. I asked for an Xray instead to make sure this wasn’t something structural or degenerative. Surprisingly, he scheduled me for an MRI.

The diagnosis: Two problems. One of my disks has slipped a bit to the side. The other problem is spinal stenosis. The passages for the spinal column and the branching nerves are closing up, causing compression and inflammation. This explains the numb hands, achy arms and shoulders, electrical jolts when running, and especially the headaches. I’ve now been referred to a neurosurgeon, and odds are it’ll mean surgery.

Though it will be good to feel normal again — it’s been a long time since that was true — I’m uneasy about being opened up, especially having work done that high up on my spine. More after talking with the neurosurgeon.