Torticollis “Wry Neck”
Upon waking up in the morning, you find that your neck is painful and stiff while you try to get out of bed. Naturally, you’d stretch out your neck a little and try to warm up those neck muscles to loosen them up. That’s when you experience a sharp, almost electrical pain in the back of your neck. Ceasing all further movements of the neck to stop the pain, you realize this might be more serious that just a stiff neck. The muscles in and around the neck is in spasm and extremely tender to the touch. Your head and neck favors one side and the sharp pain seems to go all the way into the shoulder blade too.
This is a typical case of Torticollis, or “Wry neck”, a common cause of debilitating neck pain and stiffness. Spasms of the neck muscles cause the head to tilt and/or rotate to one side. It is common to wake up with “Wry neck”. Patients finds head movements to be painful with restricted neck range of motion. This condition could hinder activities of daily living. Putting on clothes, driving, walking up and down stairs, or getting in and out of bed becomes very uncomfortable.