A Pain in the Neck

I have had a pain in the neck a long, long time. I’ve had it so long, I’m bored with it, I’ve bored my family with it, my friends are bored with it; I’m now the pain in the neck with pain in my neck.

My neck pain started with a shunt from behind in my beloved student car, a Vauxhall Nova. I was mortified. My neck hurt and my car was broken. Naturally, I worried more for my car. My neck got better, I had been through worse; I fractured two vertebrae in a previous car crash. In Stellenbosch South Africa, a tyre blew on the hire car, a Toyota Corolla, after a near miss with a truck the car veered off the road and into a storm drain. A lucky result by all accounts.

I spent a week lying flat out, in the geriatric ward of a medical clinic. Had I known what I’d experience; I would have discharged myself there and then. It seemed death was in the room with me all the time. I got used to the comical food moments, fortunately, I wasn’t hungry. My dinner would be wheeled to the end of the bed for me look at for thirty-minutes and wheeled out again thirty-minutes later. I think they expected miracles on the geriatric ward.

I spent the following 6-months lying down at my parents, getting up only for my physiotherapy visits. I wrote my university finals on my back – that might have been a first, but I got a desmond (2:2), in keeping with the South African theme.

I hurt my neck again when I went to see a friend starring in Jerry Springer the Musical on the West End. I’d had a great night, caught a London black cab home and in the excitement of the evening, jumped out and hit my head on the door frame, ‘crunch’ went my neck and for the next 2-weeks it wouldn’t and couldn’t move. I went to the doctor, he sent me to a physiotherapist who could do nothing more than stick acupuncture needles in me and hope for the best.

I spent the following 2-weeks lying down at my parents, only getting up for physiotherapy visits and eventually went back to work, with a scarf tightly wrapped around my pain, for six months following.

Life went on, my neck pain was always there, like a loyal friend. I started seeing a chiropractor, I had already seen an acupuncturist, a physiotherapist, an osteopath and a sports masseur - and now I thought it time I saw a chiropractor. - a friendly practise in Richmond, nice people, very nice prices. I spent a year there, it looked good on the evaluation x-rays but it was looking bad on my bank balance. When is a good time to accept that all of your spare cash goes to healing practitioners, rather than nice holidays, a nice car, a nice home? I spent thousands. I started to feel slightly better, we were making progress and then I had another car crash.

I was in Cornwall on holiday, driving my Mini Cooper on a narrow country road with overgrown hedgerows, a slight bend in the road with no visibility and a village idiot coming the other way a Subaru Legacy seemingly in a hurry and – bang! Just what the doctor didn’t order - a head on collision. I climbed out the driver’s side window and looked at the damage. My poor car and my poor neck. However, not all was lost – I had a scarf! Midsummer scarf wearing – why not! It went on straight away and did not come off for the summer.

The Mini was a write off. My neck was hurting again and so back to square one with damage and recovery.

If I were a car, I wonder if I would have been written off by now? The Rheumatologist might do that next week; he is next on my list.