Our journey with a neck injury Pt. 1 - The Beginning
On Saturday night, I helped @millennialnow fill up his pill box. My only job was to painstakingly remove one medicine, one pill at a time, out of the blister pack in which it came. The fact that an almost 32 year old man takes enough pills that he needs a pill box is a daily reminder of both the resiliency and the fragility of our bodies. It's equally a reminder that life can change an a flash - that every action, every decision will have a consequence.
We returned from my parents' house that night and were unloading gifts from the car when, in a moment of miscommunication, I did as asked and shut the tailgate promptly on @millennialnow's head. Oddly enough, I can't remember a single gift we received from my parents or anyone else that year. What I can remember is the concussion/neck injury he received that night and how, though unknown at the time, it would permanently alter our lives.
The hours and days immediately following @millennialnow's accident were fairly ordinary and uneventful. It would take months for the real symptoms to show. In the interim, we went about our lives as normal. Twice, during moments of intense exercise, his brain would freak out on him and act as if it was being injured all over again. These were strange but isolated occurrences. If those were warning signs, we did not heed them.
The summer of 2015 ushered in the beginning of the real symptoms: migraines, tinnitus (ringing in the ears), dizziness, and fogginess - to name a few. At this point, we didn't know why he began experiencing all these symptoms and what caused them. He seemed to be on an upward trend that August when we went to the beach but quickly took a turn for the worse when we returned home. We didn't know then but suspect now that the airboat trip we took while at the beach probably wasn't the best thing for an injured neck. They did some neat tricks that quickly spun us around in the water. I imagine for an injured neck it was much like whiplash.
After that, @millennialnow began the arduous task of searching for answers. Many doctor visits and several physical therapy sessions later he found himself in the care of a chiropractor. It seemed like we'd found the answers to all of our prayers. The adjustments seemed to be helping and he started showing improvement. That improvement did not last and we fell back to square one. We have learned since that chiropractic efforts likely made his injury worse over the long-term.
In the summer/fall of 2016, @millennialnow turned to pain management as a potential treatment for his injury and underwent a series of nerve blocks in hopes of reducing or eliminating pain and other symptoms. The blocks were not helpful. He maybe had one or two days after each block where he was relatively pain/symptom free but that was the best the nerve blocks could offer.
The first real breakthrough came that fall after he met with a pain psychologist. To read more about that, read part two here.