Sudden loss of strength in right arm, nerve impairment

[Piotrek]

Hi,
About 4 weeks ago I had a neck injury. I missed racks after doing OHP in a way that I hit the hooks and the barbell stopped my body, however my neck was pushed forward. Somewhat similar to being rear-ended in a car. I had a stiff neck for two days and some trapezius stiffness.

After that I started losing strength slowly, but surely. At the end of March I suddenly couldn’t press 50kg for once, but 3 weeks before I had been able to press 60kg for 5 reps.

Week later I did some bench marking and it was pretty obvious that I had lost strength in my right arm. I couldn’t press 9.2 kg dumbbell and wasn’t able to do one rep of lateral raise.

I went to my father’s neurologist friend two days later (Tuesday) and he recommended that I should get MRI and during examination with a reflex hammer he felt some abnormality in nerves in my arm.

On Friday I was prescribed some NSAIDs and muscle relaxers by a second neurologist (national healthcare) and the strength got a bit better and got a referral for cervical MRI. He didn’t feel any abnormalities in my hand during the same examination.

On Thursday I did another benchmark with the dumbbell and it got a bit better could do a few lateral raises and presses.

On Saturday I had MRI. Here’s a plot twist - no disc herniation, my discs are completely fine, the only thing that was mentioned was the absence of cervical lordosis.
When I turn my neck right I can still feel some pain when I push it completely to the right. I still feel some weird tingling in my fingers.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Sounds like it's healing up. Carry on.