Conditions treated
Struggling with neck pain? Let's find the root of it.
There's a wide range of conditions that can contribute to neck pain in Eau Claire, and treating the symptom without finding the actual cause tends not to hold. Jennifer Kirby, PT, DPT works through your history and your day-to-day habits first, then builds a plan around what's really going on.
What can be behind it
Five conditions, one shared starting point.
Neck pain has a habit of showing up somewhere other than the neck. It can present as a headache that sits behind the eyes, or as an ache that runs down toward your shoulder or arm, which is why radiating pain gets its own line on this list rather than folding into strain.
- Radiating painPain that starts at the neck and travels down toward the shoulder or arm.
- StrainOverworked or overstretched muscles and ligaments in the neck itself.
- WhiplashA rapid back-and-forth motion of the neck, most familiar from a car accident.
- Post-surgicalRecovery and rehabilitation following a neck-related surgery.
- HeadachesHead pain that traces back to tension or restriction held in the neck.
Whiplash is worth naming plainly: it's a rapid back-and-forth motion of the neck, most often from a car accident, and it can leave stiffness and pain that takes weeks to fully settle. Post-surgical neck recovery is its own category too, built around rebuilding motion and strength that surgery itself doesn't restore on its own.
The desk, the chair, the pillow
All three matter, and they're all sitting in your house already.
One patient wrote that Jennifer looks at how she sits on the couch, and at her desk, as part of treatment. That's not incidental. Neck pain is heavily shaped by posture held for hours at a time, and the desk you actually work at, the chair you actually sit in and the pillow you actually sleep on are more useful evidence than a description of them.
Treatment often pairs dry needling for tight knots in the neck and upper back with neuromuscular re-education to retrain the movement patterns that let the pain creep back in.
No referral needed
Call before you book anything else.
Wisconsin allows self referral for therapy services, so there's no physician's order required to start. Jennifer sees patients within 30 minutes of Eau Claire, weekdays from 3 to 7pm, and Saturdays by appointment.
Neck pain sits alongside other conditions on the full conditions list, including headaches tied to other causes and shoulder-related pain.