The pain seemed to tap me on the shoulder only lightly before it tiptoed over to my neck and tried to seize it.

Maybe I slept wrong. Or turned too quickly. Maybe my body finally needs the mythical eight glasses of water a day to keep all the toxins moving out and my muscles from drying up and turning to jerky.

At first, it felt like nothing more than a little pinch. It lasted for only a few seconds before it shifted sideways and then disappeared.

I wasn’t alarmed, but I was trying to find ways to adjust that didn’t really help.

Day by day, it got incrementally worse. By week’s end, I could concentrate on little else besides a single point, midway along the trapezius, where the pain had settled and sharpened as I stared into the computer screen for the forty-fifth hour. I could chase it: The pain would ebb as I leaned forward, and flow as I shifted my........

© The Saratogian