TBITalk

Traumatic Brain Injury Healing Tips

Neck

You Won’t Guess What Happened

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Last night I was talking to one of my friends, while socially distanced. We were video chatting and we started to joke. I am really quite animated when I am joking, everyone who knows me can confirm that. Anyway, I decided to do some sort of “Physical Comedy”, if in fact what I did was humorous enough to give it that title. I widened my mouth, further opened my eyes and dramatically tilted my head to the side. Like most of my comedy acts, I said to myself, “I can make this move bigger and it’ll be even more hilarious”!

 Believe me when I tell you, it was hilarious! It was all fun and games until I triggered the neck injury that I wrote about over the Spring.

During the call, we laughed very hard and kept adding onto our joke with random, funny gestures, until I suddenly stopped and grabbed my neck as I yelled out “Ow”, with an expression of utter shock on my face, which signaled my friend to do the same. I couldn’t believe I got injured from playing around, yet again, but I did. So there I was, once again, with neck pain. It happened a bit after 10 o’clock last night. As I type this, it is 1:07 PM and I still have a little pain on the right side of my neck, slightly above and behind my ear.  The crazy thing is, that when I initially injured my neck, it was on the left side…

Why exactly does pain change locations but remain in the same body part?

Honestly, I don’t yet know. I presume I’ll have to do additional research as to why that strange change has occurred. Perhaps because the neck is one body part and the nerves go throughout numerous places within the neck. I’m going to continue researching nerves in the neck and I’ll have a better idea about the specifics of what happened to my neck, why the pain returned on the opposite side, what my nerves and neck need to heal and what can be done to prevent it from happening again.

I will keep you updated,

-NurseCandace

My Medical Journal Document

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Sunday night I hit my head, just above my neck, right next to my left ear when my siblings and I were joking around in the kitchen and when I turned around, my little brother bumped into my sister (also younger lol) and she accidentally hit me with her cellphone. I didn’t want to overreact and cause an extra problem by rushing to the hospital because I didn’t feel like anything serious enough happened for me to leave my house with this virus situation that’s been going around.

I felt in between fine and not completely fine. I prayed to God that nothing would be severely wrong with me and tried not to be anxious.

I knew the signs to look out for because I’ve read many articles on health and always ask a lot of questions when I have gone to any type of healthcare office or facility for myself or someone I know. Some signs that I have read to be aware of after a hit to the head were, after nothing very obvious such as unconsciousness, vomiting, blood or fluid draining from the nose, ear or behind the ear. I checked myself for those red flags and thankfully, I was fine!

I told my family what happened, that I would be back but didn’t know what time and I was going to lay in my room because I felt drowsy after the hit. My mother said I should stay downstairs where everyone can keep an eye on me and I ended up staying downstairs and sitting on the sofa. My father brought me some Tylenol and I asked my sister to bring my eye mask to the living room. I was feeling a bit odd but didn’t know how to explain the feeling entirely. I kept saying “my head feels odd” and I felt a lot of pain in the spot where I hurt my head. 

I wanted to take a nap but I felt mentally awake so I ended up reading articles and texting a friend about what happened.

I also couldn’t fall asleep because everything was lively, nothing more than usual but my little brother is 8 and very active and I sleep better without stimulation. After a short while, I was getting frustrated because I felt tired and couldn’t fall asleep, on top of the fact that I was still in pain. I prayed repeatedly as I often do in stressful times, that Jesus would protect me from any major damage from what I hoped was a minor injury and I told Him all of my thoughts, feelings and concerns about what happened.

I also experienced a dulled sense of hearing in my left ear in the hour that followed my incident. 

Tuesday evening I started to have a mild pain (about a 3.5 on the pain scale) that went down the side of my neck and almost halfway around the front of my neck. It concerned me a bit and I was unsure why I was experiencing that. Over the next few days I continued to have that pain and it even switched to my right side. I have had more headaches, I believe general headaches have to do with my sleep pattern and I should increase my water intake as well. I will keep documenting to further understand what exactly happened.  

Fast forward another week, looking back I thought perhaps it was sympathetic nerve pain and will look that up tomorrow. As for my right side hurting instead of my left, I will have to do more research. I still have mild, occasional on and off pain on the sides of my neck and the soft spot on my upper neck behind my ear, on my left side feels pretty normal. It only has a slight discomfort when I press on that area to see if I feel more sensitivity on my left side than my right, and I do. Fortunately though, I am doing well and haven’t suffered any serious repercussions, so I am grateful to God for that!

It’s crazy to think all of those details and changes happened in a week and a couple days! The human body is fascinating and I continue to be in awe of how God created all the parts of the body to be intertwined so specifically and intricately. Evolution absolutely couldn’t come up with that.