Getting rid of this pain!

Yesterday I spent a little time carrying my small seven year old daughter around on my shoulder in the pool, and it was great fun. Today I woke up with a horrible ache from the right side of my neck down to the end of my right shoulder blade. Hmpf! How can such a thing happen so easily? I considered taking some devil's claw extract or some scutellaria extract, or maybe even both. Then I thought of another resource as yet untried:

Today I'm giving a leaf of this a bit of a chew. It has spines on the underside, so some caution will have to be employed. Well, here goes..

Rather than pick on my finest largest specimen which I am letting go to seed in hopes of growing a nice little patch from next year, I picked on this little rascal:

Instead of chewing the leaf, I ended up ingesting the small amount of latex that oozed from the stem and then I just had to go spy on the Robin family, while waiting for effects. Should no effects happen, I'll ingest another tiny amount of latex in about fifteen to thirty minutes, with the idea of obtaining relief without negative repurcussions.

Well, I went back to my tried and true before the day was over. The wild lettuce just seemed to make me a bit light headed. The devil's claw and scutellaria cut back on the pain as well as any otc remedy has ever done for me, and seemed to enhance my good mood too. The wild lettuce sap tasted nastily bitter and perhaps I didn't ingest enough to dull the pain, but I don't like weird head feelings.