Sherry fell asleep on the couch, and in the morning, she had a neck ache.
“It figures,” she thought. “I didn’t sleep with that nifty pillow that supports my head.”
The odd thing, though, was that the pain got worse and worse as the day went on, until she couldn’t even think about anything else. It was Sunday, and at 8:00 a.m. Monday morning, her husband drove her to an urgent care clinic. The practitioner she saw diagnosed the problem as muscle strain. Sherry didn’t think this was accurate; she’d never had a muscle strain that got ten times worse over a day or two. Later, though, she was given the same diagnosis at her primary care doctor’s office.
If she stayed absolutely still, the pain was tolerable. But if she moved at all –
to sit down, stand up, walk, ride as a passenger in a car (driving was out of the question), lie down, or roll over in bed – she experienced sudden, excruciating, “lightning bolt,” drop-you-to-your-knees pain.
The muscle relaxer and painkiller prescribed for her helped a little. Weeks passed in a fog. Sleep remained elusive. Every time she shifted position in bed, the sudden, sharp pain woke her up. Finally she made another appointment, and her husband took her back to her primary care doctor’s office.
The practitioner looked at her with alarm. “It’s been five weeks! Why didn’t you come back sooner?! I’m sending you for an MRI! This doesn’t sound like muscle strain. This sounds neurological!”
Sherry thought, “That’s a good question. Why didn’t I come back sooner?”
She realized that she had never asked, “When should I start to feel better?”
It took almost two months to get appointments to see a neurologist and then the pain specialist the neurologist referred her to, because it was now summer and the specialists’ vacation plans meant that their schedules were full. Eventually, Sherry got steroid injections that rapidly reduced the pain to background noise – three months after it started.
She suffered unnecessarily for at least an extra month because she forgot to ask that one simple question: “When should I start to feel better?”
Fortunately, that question is useful even if you aren’t sure you’ve gotten an accurate diagnosis.
Your doctor won’t be able to give you a precise date, since each case is different, but make a note of the range of dates you are given. If you haven’t started to improve as expected, call your doctor promptly. It’s possible that you have been misdiagnosed, or that the particular treatment you’ve been given doesn’t work for you. The sooner either of these problems comes to light, the better off you will be.
