Hi all On Saturday night, I was just standing around doing nothing in particular when I suddenly had an horrific shooting pain in my neck, towards the left side. I had no sleep that night as the pain was excruciating, then it started to wear off a bit through today before coming back again tonight. It feels much like whiplash now - pain mixed with stiffness mixed with weakness (I have to hold my neck when I’m trying to sit up). Is this an MS symptom, or am I blaming something completely unrelated on my MS? And if it is MS, what can be done? I’m taking ibuprofen which help a bit, have been wearing a scarf all day, but I can’t even pick up my two year old at the moment and hubby goes back to work tomorrow! Any advice appreciated. X
PS it’s also in my left shoulder
Hi Emma,
Maybe you’ve just cricked your neck without realising, ibuprofen and painkillers I would suggest, but if it hasn’t goine in a few days take a trip to doc’s for advice.
Janet
x
This kind of thing is really difficult to assign to MS, but I have had things happen to my wrist and my shoulder which are pretty difficult to explain any other way as they started without any provocation and stopped too early to be structural. Saying that, I wonder if your neck pain could be one of three things: a delayed reaction to some physical irritation, migraine (it sounds very like mine!) or occipital neuralgia. If you are suffering from nausea, odds are that it is migraine. If the pain comes in waves, then it may be occipital neuralgia in which case it’s your MS. The fact that ibuprofen has helped a bit sways it towards the physical thing or migraine though.
The upshot of all this is of course that you really need to see your GP! My speculations aren’t really terribly helpful!
Btw, if you are having nausea, then you need to take an anti-nausea pill with your pain meds otherwise they don’t properly digest and therefore don’t work.
I hope it improves soon!
Karen x
Thanks Janet and Karen! It’s feeling a bit better today and I did manage to sleep last night (with a hot water bottle under my neck!). I have an appointment tomorrow with my GP anyway, so if it’s not better I’ll mention it. I’m sure a lot of us are guilty of blaming our MS for every problem we have! I did sometimes get leg cramps, but now I blame them entirely on my MS…although it might even be that they were the early signs of it anyway, who knows?! I just worry that now I have this “label”, my GP will refuse to consider anything else. Thanks again! Emma x