Neck, I Love You

Last night I discovered what it would be like to have no neck and it turns out that it is actually a pretty important part of our bodies. The neck gets a rough deal really. Most people consider it to be merely an appendage on which to rest our heads but when it ceases to function properly, that’s when you realise just how important it is. In the middle of the night, I woke with an excruciating pain down the right side of my neck, shoulders and upper back. Thinking I had merely slept on that side of my body in an awkward position, I attempted to move and immediately let out a piercing moan. Red hot coals were being forced upon my shoulders and the pain shot down my back and arm. The sound woke The Husband with a start. “Whaf ish it, whad ish it?” he asked, the words tumbling out of his mouth in a jumble. I could do no more than say “pain, hurts, oh, it hurts” and point to the area on which the coals were being jabbed. Of course, as it was the middle of the night and pitch black, he couldn’t actually see where I was pointing to and after several frustratingly inaccurate attempts to pinpoint the source of the pain he found it, touched it and I screamed again.


He turned on the light and attempted to get me out of bed and that’s when I realised just how important the upper back is too. It appears that we use our upper back and shoulder muscles to pull ourselves up from a supine position. I had never really thought about it before – you just do it automatically. Except right then I couldn’t do it and The Husband had to support me until I was in a standing position. It was primarily when attempting to swallow the three Ibuprofen capsules that I realised just how great the neck is. I couldn’t just throw my head back to down them. Instead, I had to perform a complicated and not wholly successful manoeuvre involving bending my knees and then leaning my entire body back in order to get them down my throat. After wandering around the room in a daze, trying to stretch out my neck, I was still in just as much pain but I told The Husband to go back to bed and I attempted to do the same and somehow get comfortable, totally in vain it transpired. I drifted off sometime around 4am and slept fitfully, waking later in slightly less pain but still unable to fully turn my head. I have spent the morning turning my entire body every time I needed to look to my left or right and it is really quite annoying. Neck, I will never undervalue you again.