Desperate w/severe dibilitating neck pain

[Guest guest]

Hi All,

Woke up last Friday with a real bad sore neck. Have had problems with my

neck on and off but nothing like this! No obvious injury but as we all know we

can injure ourselves while sleeping (I have before).

By Saturday it was so bad I was bursting out into tears a lot. Decided to go

to the ER to make sure no bones were out of place and to hopefully get a neck

brace and something for the pain. Pain is an 8 with my Fentenyal patch.

I was running a fever of 101.5 but the xrays showed fine. Went Monday to an

ortho who looked at the xrays again and again said everything looked fine,

including spacing and such. He said people with ruptured disks had more movement

in their necks than I did. He was quite perplexed.

It is now day 5 and the pain is just as severe showing no signs of letting

up. The ortho put me on Balcofen for muscle spasms 10mg 3x;s a day and oxycodone

apap 10-325, 2 tabs every 4 hours. (yet the darn bottle says 1 tab every 4 so if

I need more when these run out I'll be screwed! Don't know why it says that when

he told me to take 2). This all helps some but very little - I still have pain

that makes me cry even with these meds. At least I can get some sleep, but end

up getting up when the 4 hours is up (which means I'll run out of the meds by

Friday).

The pain is on the right side, seemingly centered at base of skull where it

meets neck and also about 2 finger widths down, runs up the right side of head

and down onto top of shoulder. Base of skull has a low level dull headache, the

right ear and running along base of skull from that ear to spinal column has

that cold feeling like you get with with ear infections sometimes. It hurts to

cough, blow my nose or open my mouth. It is worse after sleeping. Have tried

everything from moist heat, spa jets and hot shower to ice packs and if anything

the warmth makes it worse.

The ortho was intrigued that I had been running a fever and said I felt

warm when I saw him yesterday, but they couldn't find a thermometer in the

office to confirm. He's sending me for a blood workup which I'll be getting done

today and I'm supposed to call his office tomorrow and let him know how I'm

feeling.

I have done a lot of searching on the net and can't really find anything

that fits to explain whats going on. The best I've found so far is something

that says " pain that persists or worsens despite rest or treatment, pain that

persists around the clock, or pain that worsens at night raises suspicion for a

metabolic or neoplastic condition. It's important, therefore, to inquire about

recent fevers, weight loss, or history of carcinoma; the resulting information

might suggest the expeditious use of approriate lab tests and imaging. "

Don't really expect anyone would have any idea whats going on but figured

you never know if someone has had this or knows someone who did. Am so desperate

to stop this pain and figured it can't help to put this out there in case

someone could help.

Sorry it's long but thank you so much for listening :-)

Gentle hugs,

B.

HEDS, New Jersey, USA