Kalia's neck pillow

Last Sunday afternoon Kalia was watching Beauty and the Beast on the couch while Tristan and I finished up packing.  Suddenly she starts whining that her neck hurts.  A few minutes later she's crying and inconsolable.  We gave her some ibuprofen and had her lay down.  After debating what to do for a few minutes we decided to try and get her to take a nap to give the medicine time to work.  After her hour nap she was not doing any better.  She would scream anytime she was moved.  Fearing an ear infection, having a move pending, and wanting to sleep that night prompted me to take her to see a dr.  We headed up to the children's hospital outreach center (great idea as it was basically empty, we were seen almost immediately).  The doctor checked her ears, throat, and examined her muscles.  She said Kalia had basically strained the muscles of her neck somehow.  I felt a bit foolish that I'd run panicked to the hospital for some stiff muscles.  But when your child is screaming in obvious pain it's hard to judge the seriousness.  They gave her the neck brace to wear for comfort and a popsicle.  But Kalia wouldn't take it off.  She loved it and it was awesome for the 11 hr. car ride south.  I think the popsicle did more for her than anything else.  As you can see in the picture, her head is tilted a bit to her left shoulder.  It took about a four days to get better and we debated taking her back in.  She was fine Monday, then Tuesday seemed lethargic and sick-like with a low fever.  This time we simply called the pediatrician rather than run panicked to the hospital.  We reinstated the doses of ibuprofen and she slowly got better.  By Saturday we had gotten her over wearing the 'neck pillow.' 

I learned a valuable lesson by the experience: Popsicles are the universal cure, and I shouldn't try to diagnose anything since I was way off thinking it was an ear infection!