Peg, I don't know how long ago your surgery was, and I can understand your concern about the symptoms returning, but I hope you can try to put that out of your mind long enough to relax. If you think about it too much, the stress will only make it worse, and cause you to tense up more, which certainly WON'T help you to relax that muscle. That won't help at all now, will it.

While I was going to PT, another patient had this issue and my therapist told him that for tight muscles, the best thing to do is to take motrin (up to 2400 mg's a day, so that works out to 800 mg's every 8 hours) and ALTERNATE hot and cold compresses for 20 minutes each. Skip an hour, then do it again. That will make the muscles contract and expand, which means they are going up and down and "working themselves" kind of simulating a massage. The motrin, however, MUST be used consistently. There is a trick to that...if you DON'T use it every 8 hours, it's not going to work. The way she put it was "it's like a fire...you have to keep adding wood to the fire to keep the fire going...and motrin is the same way - in order for it to work, you have to consistently keep it in your system."

My SO does hard labor over the summer (he owns a landscaping business). He also had a really bad back, and the muscles tensed up in his lower back, so we used this technique on him...and within a couple days he was feeling MUCH better. Normally his back hurts for WEEKS when it gets like that, so we feel this really did help him. He worries too cuz he had surgery for blown discs a few years ago and at that time the surgeon said there was another one or two "ready to go at any time" so every time his back bothers him, that's what he thinks.

So perhaps you can TRY this????

When my neck would get tight like that, it usually went down towards the sholder too. My scalenes were removed, but it felt like the tightness was in my "phantom scalenes" and also towards the back of my neck. Rather than rubbing my neck, I'd sit in the chair and pull my shoulder DOWN until I'd feel the stretch up my neck. If you were in PT, did they have you do the towel stretches? If so, try those maybe.

You mentioned you're trying to get your pcp to giv you a referral back to your TOS doc....do you think you can request a referral for an Xray FIRST, BEFORE referring you back to the tos doc, to see if there is scar tissue building up in there? Perhaps someone who has been thru this can tell you what the first thing is a TOS doc would look for, and if it's scar tissue, then you can "head it off at the pass" and be prepared with xrays or whatever test is necessary before you even go back.

In the meantime, baby yourself. If you have a heating pad that turns off by itself, it always felt good to me to fall asleep with it tucked under my neck at night when mine was stiff. Got to where I HAD to have it though

Gentle Hugs to you sweetie...and take care of yourself. pain sucks...