A Pain in the Neck
Quick, without thinking too much, which do you get more often, a pain in the ass or a pain in the neck? I’m betting on the later. I will admit to having had a hemorrhoid or two in my sixty-six years and I may have pulled a glut muscle once or twice, but pains in the ass are pretty rare by my estimation. But pains in the neck are way too common for my liking. I once went to see Jay Leno live at the St. George Theater on Staten Island. He commented that when he was young he would crash his motorcycle and walk away with a slight limp, from which he would recover in a day or two. He then went on to say that these days if he turned his neck and yawned he would be out of commission for three weeks. Of course, his anecdote was about aging, but I empathized because I had had that happen to me on a big yawn. It hurts like a son-of-a-bitch and you have a moment of two when you think you might actually choke yourself on account of the cramping. I am much more careful how a I yawn now.
A favorite fun movie is My Big Fat Greek Wedding and a favorite line is when the mother says to Tula that the man is the head of the family, but the woman is the neck. That may be the most favorable comment ever made about a neck. It happens to be a very valid comment in that a head without a neck is sure to be a real burden. Just ask the sloth and the manatee, the only two mammals that don’t happen to have necks. Also, one of the quirks of zoology is that a fish cannot have a neck. If you find something in the water (excluding a manatee) and it has a neck, you had better find out what it is since it cannot be a fish.
But for all its value in moving the head this way and that way, the neck is also a vulnerability. Kids are told not to “break your neck”, and if you are wild and crazy you drive at breakneck speeds. The human neck is made up of four primary parts; vertebrae, viscera (throat, etc. for breathing and eating) and two vascular compartments (the carotids). Think about that in the context of all the most important parts of the body. The neck can be your end from the dislocation of the cervical vertebrae and the spinal cord within. It’s awfully hard to breath or eat/drink without a throat. And if you want to bleed someone out with speed, a small slit to the carotid artery is all it takes. In other words, there is a lot to screw up in a neck if your not careful and yet it is man’s nature to “stick out his neck” at every occasion.
As I write this it occurs to me that the neck bone may not be connected to the pelvic bone, but still there is ample room for confusion between the cervix of the uterus and the cervix of the throat. The neck is a confusing part of the anatomy to be sure.
At this very moment I have a meaningful pain in my neck. I cannot tell if it is from lifting too many 75-pound bags of rocks, trying too hard to move large sheets of artificial turf to build my mini-golf course (Handy Brad has the week off), lifting heavy stepping stones for the pathway, sleeping on it on my side in a funny way or perhaps just hunching over my iPad too much as I am doing right now. There are many ways to injure a neck as we learned from Jay Leno.
Every morning when I wake up, I am in the habit of sitting on my bed and giving my back a twist in both directions and then holding my neck down in each direction until my chin touches my chest. I can feel the stretch to my neck with every one of these movements, but it is not enough to ward of the stiffness that I feel later in the day when I take a moment to sit and move my head around. And then before I go to bed I take out my massage gun and crank it up to have Kim dig it into my shoulder blade in hopes of loosening up that hidden deep neck muscle that won’t stop screaming at me. I even have one of those shawl-like massagers in the living room that kneeds your neck as you hold your arms in the straps. It all works a little, but none of it works particularly effectively to make the pain in the neck go away.
I need to get personal now. I have a smaller neck than I wish I had. I do not mean a long neck the way people think of Audrey Hepburn as having a long neck, but rather a thick neck like a football player. I have a 17” neck size in shirts, which is barely an XL shirt. That would be fine if I had an XL torso, but I have an XXXL torso on a good day. If I buy an off-the-rack dress shirt, in order for it to fit, I end up with something like a 19” neck that looks sloppy and stupid. So I have my shirts made, which is actually pretty easy these days with online customization. A good-looking suit and tie requires a proper-fitting shirt collar. Maybe if I had played more than one year of high school football I would have done enough dumbbell shrugs to build up my neck. I’m no pencil-neck, but I could still use a bigger, more muscular neck. Maybe that would keep me from getting so many stiff necks. But then again, I have to believe that dumbbell shrugs themselves lead to lots of pains in the neck…no pain no gain, right?
I have occasionally gone to a chiropractor for adjustments and I even have a multi-visit plan active out here. They always say the same thing: you’ll need to come in three times a week for several weeks for us to work this out. I once went to Princess Diana’s Osteopath in London on the recommendation of my Scottish friend Johnny Mac. He fixed me in one session by doing more adjusting than he said was normally advisable in one go, but he knew I wasn’t local, so he made an exception.
So, tonight I will do what I do when I am not chiropractically right. I will lie on the closet floor (its a big closet) and do all the stretches I have learned to do over the years of being a man too big for his bones, tendons and ligaments. When I realize that I have spent my entire adult life over 300 pounds (even though I am approaching a thirty-year low weight right now), it’s amazing that I don’t have more aches and pains. I can make a few simple stretches and a little bit of size-appropriate care go a long way. And here’s the funniest damn thing that Jay Leno should put into his act…after all that, in a few days or a week, the pain in my neck will be miraculously gone and I will only realize it after a few days of its healing and wonder what in hell I did to make it go away.