G.B.
I slipped and fell off the stairs to my porch onto a planter. I ruptured my C5-6 disk. It was impinging my C6 nerve. I can honestly say birth quickly became a 3-4 on the pain scale of 1-10 because the pain I felt with this neck problem put every other pain I had ever felt way down low in the numbers.
I suffered for days with this. Finally I went to my doc and he ordered a Medrol pack for me. It's a bubble pack of steroids that has, numbers are an example and may not be correct..., 6 to be taken the first day, 5 to be taken the second day, 4 to be taken the 3rd day, 3 to be taken the 4th day, 2 on the 5th day and 1 on the 6th day.
The pain was so much less on the 2nd day and it was totally gone on the 3rd day. I was feeling to wonderful by the 4th day that I thought I was healed.
What this med does is it reduces the inflammation, all over your body. The steroid goes through and just takes the irritations, swelling, feverish feelings from every little boo boo in the whole body.
I could do stretches, physical therapy is good at this point because all the tissue is at it's smallest and can slip back where it's supposed to be. BUT if you stretch this way instead of that way it could slip the wrong way.
So learning how to stretch the right way is important. I got a lot of wonderful exercises to do that I still do to this day if my neck is hurting or if I have a stress headache.
One of them is putting a pillowcase on a pillow. I would use my chin to hold the pillow while I slipped the case on the bottom. This is a good exercise. Use a think pillow and hold it under your chin. Put your shoulders down and stretch the neck and shoulder muscles while pushing down on the pillow with your chin. This stretches the muscles all the way from the back of your head to about your bra strap area. It does not need to be a hard stretch just a gentle one.
ETA
Heat makes it worse. Ice makes it better.