I have a physical scheduled in two weeks, so I will be getting a doctor’s opinion. But I was wondering if anyone had ideas what might be going on with me.
For about a month now I’ve been having chronic neck pain. It feels like a “crick” in the neck you might get after sleeping in a weird position. I have limited range of motion and it feels kind of “crunchy” (if that makes any sense) when I move it around. It’s only on the left side and is worse in the morning after waking up. It gets a little better throughout the day and exercise seems to help it.
Now for the past week or so I’ve had a headache each morning along with the neck pain/stiffness. Ibuprofen helps but it never fully goes away.
One other thing. About a month ago out of the blue I had large swollen glands on the left side where the pain is now. I went to the doctor and he put me on 10 day antibiotics. I had no other symptoms except for the neck stiffness and swollen glands on one side of neck. I stopped the antibiotics after about six days because the glands went down and the medicine was giving me an upset stomach. No swollen glands now.
Living SMART is actually the best revenge. Next time you’re given a round of antibiotics follow the instructions and take them all, even though you feel better.
My money is on whatever you had before, coming back stronger than ever, now causing pains in new and interesting places.
If I were you, I’d go directly to the doctor. Not wait for the physical. (Whom I expect may chastise you for stopping your meds early.)
Yeah, stopping the antibiotics was probably a bad idea. But if I had some sort of infection, wouldn’t I have other symptoms? I don’t and never did have any sinus symptoms, etc.
Maybe I will go into the doc before my physical. Ugh, I hate going to the doctor.
You’re describing exactly a problem I had, and it was a contraction of the SCM muscle, which definitely causes headaches. Try some stretching exercises like this or this.
Happy it helped. You will probably want to follow up with a professional, especially if you can’t rule out any non-muscle strain/spasm. If it is muscular only, it might be one of those rare cases where chiropractic therapy (McKenzie Method chiro in particular) works as advertised.