When I woke up this morning, I stepped into the shower, like every morning. I didn’t notice anything strange about my body, and felt relaxed while I washed myself to prepare for the upcoming day.

Of course, this was early in the morning, and I had just woken up, so I was only partially conscious. I’m usually in a drowsy and partially-still-asleep state until like 12 PM in the afternoon.

After getting out of the shower, I grabbed a towel and dried myself off, got dressed, and brushed my teeth. Even at this point, I still felt fine.

Then, I grabbed the towel again to dry my hair off a bit more. After getting my hair as dry as possible, I put the towel back on the hanger and left the bathroom.

Suddenly, I noticed that there was a sharp cramp-like pain on the right side of my neck, flowing down through my shoulder. Being a martial artist, I’m used to random body parts hurting, so I didn’t really think of it as much of a big deal. I tried to stretch it out a bit by rotating my neck around and squeezing my neck and shoulder, and extended my neck all the way to my left to try and crack it to relieve the pressure.

Nothing seemed to work as an immediate solution, but I still didn’t think much of it and went on with my day.

Not much later, when I got ready to leave my room to head to my first class, I realized that the pain in my neck was getting worse and worse. I tried to pinch my muscle to see if I could relieve any unexpected cramps or pressure, but nothing seemed to work. I tried cracking my neck again, but at this point, it was so painful that I couldn’t stretch my neck far enough to even get it into cracking range. I tried looking over to my right, and realized that the tightness in my neck muscles was so intense that I couldn’t even look to my right.

Again, being a martial artist, I’m used to having random injuries like this pop up once in a while, so I, again, still didn’t really think about it much and went on with my day.

By the evening, I realized that there was actually a problem with my neck. It had gotten to a point where if I wanted to look at something to my right, I would have to turn my entire body because my neck wouldn’t cooperate with my eyes.

I thought back to what I did that might have caused this. Of course, because of my subconscious state of sensation immediately after waking up, I don’t know if this neck pain developed overnight and I just didn’t feel it while showering, or if it had developed after I woke up. Assuming that I was conscious enough that I wouldn’t be completely oblivious to a stinging cramp-like pain in my neck, I came to the conclusion that this happened sometime between when I brushed my teeth and when I dried my hair again.

So, I decided to post the public service announcement in the title of this blog post along with my story from today.

The next time you go to blindly dry your hair, remember to think before you act.