Chronic neck pain/headaches

Hey everyone I'm usually all over the board typically in anxiety and depression. I've been getting horrible migraines since I was a little girl and got into a car accident in 2011 which injured my neck. I've had horrible horrible neck pain ever since which almost everyday & always triggers my migraines. I have three kids 10, 5 & my youngest being only 6 months old so it's hard for me to deal with the pain and do what I do everyday. I've been taking my pain meds ,norco recently increased to 7.5 because the lowest dosage has not been helping what so ever anymore. I usually wake up with the horrible neck pain & headaches and take excedrin then wait an hour and take the pain meds. This has been for years now I think my body is just being difficult and not reacting to all the meds like they used to anymore because nothing seems to help. It's like the meds are sugar pills anymore. Does nothing. I have horrible anxiety which the pain makes worse!!!!!! And the depression I have makes the pain worse. It's one big horrid cycle!!!! Will it ever end?? If anyone else has any similar pain please share how you ease the pain. I also use icy hot.. Bio freeze.. Vicks rub.. Heating/ice pads.. It's like a lose lose situation because nothing at all helps!!! As if my anxiety depression and panic wasn't disabling enough... This pain is disabling its been horrible 4 days this week to where I couldn't move for hours at a time!!

Hi Lacey & welcome to the chronic pain forum. So sorry to read what you are dealing with. Yes, at time it does seem like we get stuck in these no win situations, but we can't just throw the towel in & not keep trying things.

I have a long history of migraines & neck pain along with a whole lot of other issues. For the migraines, is there a reason you are not on any of the medications specifically used to treat a migraine? A lot of folks have great success with those.

You mentioned a car accident a few years back. Have you had any testing done on the neck like an MRI? If so do you know if anything showed up on it? Have you had a recent MRI or anything? Sorry for so many questions just trying to piece things together to throw out some suggestions.

There are many things that may possibly help with the headaches & the neck pain. Getting into some physical therapy, perhaps aqua therapy, Tens Unit, finding a good massage therapists but that can get pricey but well worth it. Many of us here are under the care of pain mgt drs & they of course offer different types of injections & procedures for various ailments. What helped my neck pain the most was having the nerve endings ablated by radio frequency. The dr did a diagnostic bock first to see of I was a candidate for the procedure & sure enough I was. Like anything else we try to lower our pain, not everyone gets the same relief or benefit. There are lots of threads in this forum about treating neck pain & trying different procedures. You can use the search feature to read about them, but we do ask that you not post on those older threads. You will get a better response asking questions here & we like to keep the older threads off of the main page.

Yes, we often do build up a tolerance to medications when they are taken long term. This can happen with any type of long term drug. Then begins the process of trying different things to get relief.

Depression & chronic pain go hand in hand for some reason. A lot of times if we can get our depression under decent control, our pain levels tend to decrease somewhat. Add anxiety to the mix & it really can go sideways it seems like. Learning how to cope with all of it helps a lot.

Keep checking back, its a weekend plus a holiday so things are usually slow around here at this time. Take care.