From Shoulder Pain to a Pain in the Neck

After going to therapy for my shoulder for a week. I woke up one morning a few weeks back with what felt like a pinched nerve in my neck. Every time I went into therapy for the shoulder my therapist would ask how I was doing. I would tell him that the shoulder was the same, and I also now had a pain in my neck. The pain didn't go away for around 2 weeks. Finally, he did some test on my neck by moving my head into different positions. He decided it was best to send me back to the sports doctor this time for neck x-ray. I really thought this was going overboard, and that it would go away eventually.

Anyway, I was surprised to find out that the x-ray did indeed show I had some miss alignments in my C5 vertebrae. It was enough that the doctor thought I should get an MRI. The MRI results showed that I had what the doctor called "severe disk disease". This basically means I had 2 disks that are squeezing out of from the vertebrae, one of which is pushing into my spinal chord.

The doctor said I should see a spinal specialist. So, on Wednesday of this week, I saw the spinal doctor. She again showed me the x-rays and MRI and did some movement tests. She said that I have arthritis in the bone (little pointed spurs on the edge of the bone) and disk degeneration. Both doctors theorize that this could be causing the pain in my shoulder and arm. For now she gave me a cortisone shot in the shoulder. In two weeks, I will go back to see if that helped. If not, she will move to a shot in the neck, an epidural I think. This means a day off of work, no driving afterward, etc.. So far it still hurts. Stay tuned...