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Your body will frequently give you clues about what's maintaining the pain.  Many experts on pain believe that much of chronic muscle pain can be traced back to an irritated spinal nerve root. These are the nerves that come out of the neck and go to the muscles in the shoulder, arm, forearm, and hand.  

Finding those irritated nerves can be the key to a successful diagnosis and treatment of your condition. The problem is that physicians rarely perform this exam in detail in this age of managed care. However, with the help of PainAnswers, you can now perform a complete dermatome exam at home.

What is a dermatome? Each nerve that exits the spine also corresponds to feeling or sensation

 
You're assignment is to check all the dermatomes associated with the neck. This may take you a full 10-20 minutes, so you may want to evaluate this step in several tries. When you're looking for dermatomes, here are some tips:
1. You're checking for the skin's ability to feel different things. Compare your ability to feel normally on both sides. Does the right feel about the same as the left?

2.  Check for light touch and pinprick. Checking for light touch is easy, just brush a finger (one with normal sensation) against the skin and compare to the other side. You may want to have a partner help you. If one side feels a lot less or a lot more, that's abnormal. For instance, if you're testing the skin by touching it with a safety pin and one side feels dull while the other feels sharp, that's abnormal. Another abnormal finding is if one side feels tingly or too sensitive to touch.  To check for pinprick, get a clean safety pin and touch the area. You should be able to feel the same degree of sharpness on both sides.

3. Feel in the same spot on both sides of your body.

4. Look for clues in how the skin looks. Is it dryer in some areas? Is it loosing it's hair? Does it feel less pliable (more like rubber than skin)? 

Any of these can mean that a nerve in your neck is abnormal.

 

If you feel you've found an area that feels or looks different and follows a dermatome pattern, you should have this area checked by a medical professional in more detail.
 

Start at C2 below and work your way down to C8. Click on C2 to find out more about that dermatome, etc... Get a pen and paper and write your findings down. For instance, you might write: "C5 felt much less light touch on the left, but had good feeling to the safety pin".

C2

C3

C4

C5

C6

C7

C8
 
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