Look! Where? Owww!!

2/13/09

Two Monday mornings ago I woke up from sleeping on a Futon without the ability to turn my head to the left or touch my left ear to my left shoulder. I slept wrong or pulled a muscle doing I don't know's a.k.a. shoulder shrugs, I think it was how I slept. I started to massage the back of my neck and that gave insignificant comfort (felt looser, but still couldn't turn head). Luckily or unluckily, I remembered I had some leftover heat pads from my left oblique cramp the week before.

I arrived at work, cut the pad in half, and slapped it on the left shoulder/neck area. While driving I had to keep my head straight but twist my whole body to the left to look for oncoming traffic at right turns. I put the other half of the pad on later in the day. My Wonderful!! girlfriend (notice how I capitalized the W and added exclamation points ;)) made a massage appointment for me for the end of the week. Over the next few days I used tiger balm on the back of my neck a couple times a day and kept up with regular stretches.

Each day I found that I was getting closer to my normal range of motion. Friday finally came around and I was hoping that the massage therapist would PUT IT ON ME and go deep. She didn't :(, it was just a Swedish massage with little pressure. The massage therapist didn't put a lot of pressure on my neck (which was probably a good thing now that I think about it). Here I m a week after the massage with FULL RANGE of motion with no pain. Ready to go all exorcist this weekend.

What I learned..

-Take time to recover (2 wks)

-Take steps to recover (heat, pressure)

-Tip your massage therapist

-Don't sleep on futons