Thank you very much for the nice welcome! I will look at the stickies and I already appreciate all the helpful information here.

The vein in my arm is not swollen and does not hurt.

Yes, I have shoulder, upper back, neck, arm, chest and hand pain. It is worst in my arms and hands. It is bad when I sleep, and after I perform certain motions, including repetitively reaching above my chest level (something I do at work). Today I reached backwards with my left arm while stretching out my right arm and it was very painful. I also get "angina-like chest pain" periodically, but have tested negatively for angina.

I have terrible posture, with sloping shoulders that I often hunch forward. Also, I have a large chest and until recently carried two very heavy shoulder bags slung across my neck.

All of this pain started with an incident where I was flying, and I was a nervous flyer to begin with. (I also spent most of that day carrying the above two heavy shoulder bags.) After getting off the flight, both my arms went completely numb and I started getting a pulsing pain in my neck. I thought I was having a stroke so as a result I gave myself a panic attack. Then I had another incident that started with a similar pulsing pain in my neck, and then a pain shooting up my arm. I thought it was a heart attack. Both times I had testing and everything was fine, so now I have been labelled as suffering from panic attacks.

I have not yet had any MRIs or X-rays of my neck. My regular doctor wants me to wait a month while wearing sensible shoes and sleeping with a horseshoe pillow! He will then send me for an MRI if I am still in pain. I feel that I am having panic attacks because of the pain, not having pain because of the panic attacks, so I want to be proactive about things.

Thanks again for the lovely welcome.