Right-sided head/neck pain, ear issue

**CrystalChord** · 12-22-2009 02:13 PM

I went and slept over at my friend's house last night. And I love going there except...her mom and dad both smoke. The house reeks of it, and on top of that, they have a cat and a bird in a really tiny, stuffy house (Their livingroom is seriously the size of my bedroom, and my bedroom is SMALL).

The cigarette smell and stuffiness has always given me headaches, so this isn't that different from normal. But the headache is all right sided and my neck and jaw are hurting on that side too. Maybe I got a migraine from staying there?

Also: Last night when I was changing for bed, I had to go up to her room in the attic (yes, the attic) to get my clothes. The stairs are extremely steep and tall, so I really had to work to get up there. My heart was thudding in my chest, but I could feel my pulse in my right ear, like a *pop* *pop* *pop* noise each time my heart beat. This really freaked me out, because I've been having pressure issues with my right ear for a few days now. I suffer from TMJ disorders on occasion (especially if I talk or sing a lot, which I've done the past two days), so I'm wondering if that would be caused from a jaw problem...It just freaked me the heck out.

Has anyone "felt" that kind of pulse in their ear before? Of course, everyone knows what I'm afraid of, so I won't talk about that...

But everything else seems pretty normal otherwise.

**ItsASecret** · 12-22-2009 03:39 PM

The pulse is because your heart was pounding, you got tired going up the stairs. Same effect happens if you run a few miles and get tired, you will feel your pulse just pounding a mile a minute but there is nothing medically wrong going on. It means nothing other than your body is tired in that specific moment. Any TMJ symptoms are related to the actual joints, ligaments, muscles ect. not to the feeling of a pulse so your okay. But I mean when it comes to the anatomy of the area concerned with TMJ symptoms you can get a popping sound, but it would be from actually moving the jaw (like eating or talking) and not walking up the stairs or smelling smoke all day.

Back to the smoke, well smoke is an irritant so even if you do not have an allergy or smoke yourself it can still cause you to go "uuuugggghhh I don't like this". Headaches from irritations are super common so again nothing to worry about. Location of a headache also does not matter because there are many different kinds of headaches caused by many many different sources. Again, like usual, if something serious were happening you would already be in the hospital hooked up to machines and IVs or dead.

**CrystalChord** · 12-22-2009 04:08 PM

With rest, the headache went away, but every time I woke up in the night, the pain would just shoot through my head again. I wonder if it was because my body wasn't registering the smell of the smoke while I was sleeping or what...I will say it made the experience less enjoyable than I wanted it to be. I absolutely adore that friend of mine, but her house...It's hard to spend even a few hours there without feeling ill.

**ItsASecret** · 12-22-2009 04:41 PM

When you are asleep it does not stop the smoke from irritating the tissues in your body. It just means that you do not feel anything going on until you wake up. Same thing happens when you wake up with leg pains or needing to go pee, you are not conscious of the feelings even if they are happening in the middle of the night because your brain is essentially in an unconscious state while you sleep.