The neck pain was always there.

It was a constant ache at the base of my skull. The muscles running up the back of my neck were tight, always pulling against the weight of my head. By the end of the day, I couldn’t hold my head up.

All I wanted to do was lie down on my commercial grade heating pad. On high, all the time.

I told every doctor I saw. They all had answers, and none of them were right.

If that sounds familiar, you’re not imagining it.

What They Called It

Tech neck was the first label. I’d been working from home since the pandemic and the assumption was posture. They said I was sitting wrong and looking at screens too long. Told me I was holding tension in my shoulders. I adjusted my workstation. I stretched. The pain didn’t change.

Then it was stress. Then perimenopause. Every provider landed in the same place: manage your stress, adjust your posture, try anti-inflammatory foods, reduce your screen time. My chart said neck pain and migraines. Yet the conversation always came back to lifestyle.

What I Tried

Three years of recommendations followed. Tooth sensitivity led to bite guards. Then Botox injections for the jaw. Then trigger point injections. Acupuncture. Physical therapy. Muscle relaxants. Prescription NSAIDs. A curved metal tool a specialist hooked around the base of my neck and pulled hard enough to make me flinch.

No one asked why it never left. 

What the Evenings Looked Like

We’d barely finished the dishes when the girls were already asking for the popcorn.

I used the air popper. The kernels shot out of the spout into a mixing bowl. I’d melt the butter, pour it over, add the salt, and stir it together before filling the red movie theater containers. One for each of us. Except my husband. He volunteered to take the mixing bowl with whatever was left in it, while the girls whined how unfair that was from the other room.

I had the neck wrap on before any of it started. Pajamas first, then the wrap. Getting through dinner and cleanup was all I had left in me. The heating pad was already waiting for me on the couch.

We were working our way through Once Upon a Time, years after it had aired. The girls would press into me under the fluffy blanket and catch the smell of my wrap.

“Not the meat pie,” they’d say.

I laughed. I always laughed.

But sometimes, somewhere in the middle of an episode, I would drift. Back into the exam rooms, back into the explanations that didn’t hold. And in the quiet, I would ask myself the questions I couldn’t say out loud.

What if they’re right. What if it is all in my head.

Then Rumplestiltskin would say something: All magic comes with a price, dearie. Or one of the girls would laugh, and I’d come back.

The episode kept playing. They thought I was watching.

On the nights when I didn’t have the energy to make the real popcorn, I’d call from the couch and tell them to just make a bag in the microwave. They did and nobody said anything about it.

When I Stopped Believing the Explanations

It was gradual. A slow accumulation of treatments that didn’t work and explanations that didn’t fit. My body kept getting worse.

Then I was referred to both a pain psychologist and a pain psychiatrist. Two separate referrals, for the pain at the base of my skull.

I had been in enough boardrooms to know when a problem was being managed instead of solved. Something structural was wrong. No one was looking at the full picture.

What It Actually Was

In my case, it was craniocervical instability. The ligaments connecting my skull to my upper spine were too loose to hold the joint in place. My muscles were compensating for a structural failure they were never built to manage.

It didn’t show on my standard MRIs. They were performed lying down,with my spine supported. My scans came back normal, more than once.

It wasn’t until a Digital Motion X-ray that the instability was found. The slippage had been there all along.

It took 111 medical appointments across 26 providers before someone ordered that scan.

What I Know Now

If the neck pain isn’t resolving no matter what you try, it might be structural.

Standard imaging doesn’t always capture what’s happening when the body is upright and in motion. A normal MRI doesn’t always mean nothing is wrong.

When the same symptoms keep returning, the question worth asking is whether anyone is looking at the right problem.

Nine months out from surgery, there are still days.

Not long ago I spent one on the couch, eyes closed, a throbbing pain spreading from the right side of my jaw up through my ear and down into my neck. My daughter, seventeen now, came in and asked me to make her lunch.

From the couch, eyes still closed, I told her I wasn’t feeling well. That she’d have to make her own today.

She went to the kitchen and made chicken fingers and mac and cheese. Didn’t say anything about it. Neither did I.

She’s grown up knowing some days I can’t.

I’m not a doctor. I can’t tell you what’s causing your neck pain. But if you’ve been explaining it away for as long as I did, you’re not doing it wrong. The appointments kept ending the same way for me too.