Hello mamici1

I wanted to respond to your post about the symptoms with pain up the back and side of the head , into the shoulders, and about not being able to turn your head or look up. I have had symptoms like this when the alignment of the vertebrae in my neck are pulled out of the normal because of muscle spasms. My physical therapist has been able to resolve this for me. I have thoracic outlet syndrome that also causes my neck and chest to be tight, and tighter on one side, and it shifts my pelvis. If I do something with bad posture, I can kick up some of these symptoms, and what happens is my C1 or C2 gets twisted or tilted, then the other muscles are trying to compensate for this misalignment and they hurt too. There have been times my neck was locked and couldn't rotate to one side, and I've had some vertigo after looking upward when things were out of alignment which I had not realized at the time. I don't know about your other diagnoses, but sometimes conditions can have overlapping symptoms and something gets missed. It would be something to ask questions about if this could be something that may also happen to you. If that's something that has been checked out already, perhaps someone else can benefit from reading this. Sometimes that pain is intense and very fatiguing. It's important to know if there are any issues or instability with the cervical spine before any physical therapy treatment is done, particularly when the issue is right at the base of the skull. My physical therapist told me she would not treat without knowing this because it can be serious if there is instability there and something is moved. The physical therapy I'm talking about is a hands on manual muscle release by a physical therapist with expertise in treating the cervical spine. I also had a cervical disc problem for which I have had surgery at Mayo, so this kind of thing doesn't happen much anymore, and the muscle spasms have calmed down. The TOS (for me) also pulls from my neck through my chest to my pelvis and can cause my pelvis to go out of alignment, and some of my physical therapy is resetting the pelvis. The misalignment causes low back pain (worse on one side) and some sciatic pain which physical therapy resolves for me. Building core strength in my spine helps everything stay where it is supposed to be and keeps this from happening. I am still in physical therapy for the TOS which is a full body functional alignment approach and doing well.