The second injection did not do anything much, and I was on the verge of considering visiting a neurosurgeon for a consultation. There comes a point when the pain has gone on too long that I would not care about the consequences of whatever action taken to try to fix the problem. If the doctor says I need to have my neck removed then I would be all for it.

But my bike team has a friend visiting this week from a place far away, and he is a PT/former pro cyclist who works on pro cyclists. He's been doing some work on me. In ten minutes' time, he had eliminated the spike of pain that was consistently emanating from the right side of the back of my neck. After the first session I was able to move my head all the way to the right, like a normal person can do. He thinks that by the end of the week he will have me (mostly) healed, and that the pain will have completely subsided in a month's time if I follow his orders and do the prescribed stretches regularly.

Anyhow, if I have any problems requiring PT in the future, I guess I will be taking a long plane trip.

My biggest frustration with this incident has been the inability of anyone in the medical field to pinpoint the source of the problem and fix it. If I had seen this miracle-working PT first, when I had been in pain for only a couple of weeks, this would not have dragged out into a 2-month long odyssey of suffering and the corresponding descent into near-insanity.

I suppose there is a bright side to everything. I've been enlightened as to how unhealthy it is to spend 40 hours a week sitting down in front of a computer, encased in a box under flourescent lights. The irony is that I need health insurance to deal with the health issues that arise from the employment that provides me with the health insurance.

Things are going to change.