Not your average suburban mom. I’m more your typical, normal, commonplace, everyday, garden-variety suburban mom. With a thesaurus.

Thursday, December 12, 2013

'Tis the Season to be a Hot Mess And a Rant For FREE

Guess who got prescribed a muscle relaxer?



This girl did.

I've been faithfully attending physical therapy three times a week for a neck, shoulder, and upper back pain. The pain started as stiffness in my neck towards the end of October and morphed into a pretty impressive headache (not in intensity, but in longevity), and by the end of November I couldn't tilt my head back to wash my hair, and looked like I was doing the Robot whenever I was asked to look sideways.

I knew I needed some sort of physical therapy when my self-treatment (a.k.a. Googling videos of people stretching themselves out and doing massage with tennis balls) proved ineffective, but first I needed a referral from my Primary Care Physician because that extra appointment scheduled two weeks out doesn't waste time at all.

After all we went through with Brian's PCP, may I take a moment to love on my PCP? She is amazing. First, her name is Carol King, which is pretty sweet. Second, her husband is an Ironman, so she is well versed in the sport of triathlon. When I went to her and said, "I can't do any of my normal activities," meaning swim, bike, and run, she knew that was kinda sorta a big deal for me. The first thing she did was tell me to take more drugs if I was comfortable doing that (twist my arm), and then she referred me to a physical therapist.

The drugs are awesome. The Ibuprofen is dealing with the pain and inflammation, and the muscle relaxers are making me sleep um, very relaxing.

The hardest part of physical therapy is finding child care so I can go. I've been trying to schedule as many sessions as possible during Ezra's school, but I still have to take the three girlies with me. One day when I had Ezra all day, Stacy down the street took my littles, and a friend from church is watching all of the kiddos during my Friday sessions. (Those sessions are longer because they include massage therapy.)(Like, it's been medically prescribed for me to get a massage once a week.)(Yep, if it wasn't for the knowledge that I'm dealing with constant pain, I'd hate me too.)

I've only been seen a little over a week, but I have faith it's helping. My therapist told me she needs a jackhammer to loosen up my trapezius muscle, but she's been making do with her bare hands because she is a beast.

In other news, I'm a little miffed at Facebook. Roughly half of my blog page views come from people who have personally chosen to follow me on Facebook with the sole purpose of getting updates when I post them. Facebook is now charging fan pages to show their updates to everyone who follows them, resulting in a 60% decline in my Facebook blog traffic. (Because I math-ed that mess, y'all.)(That's how you know it's a serious issue for me - the occurrence of voluntary ciphering.)

You know what? I'm a stay at home mom with four kids. One of my kiddos is in (really expensive) therapy. Another takes (really expensive) medication. I have this teeny-tiny blog as a means of preserving my own sanity in this season of life, as well as carving out a space in this world to capture the craziness of raising my children. All so I can remember it and be thankful when I'm old. I really can't afford to spend money on a recreational blog.

But blogging does take time. Sometimes it takes a lot of time. And especially because I'm teeny-tiny in size I treasure every person who takes time out of their day to read whatever drivel I'm peddling. If they have signed up to read it, all the better; I treasure these people because it's like a promise they will be returning. But when Facebook won't let me post to everyone unless I pay at least $5 each and every time, well, that's some buh-loney right there.

In conclusion, I have no idea yet what to do about this. But I needed to rant, so thank you. Have a lovely day, and, if you read this from Facebook, throw me a "like" or a comment to let me know you are among the treasured few. Please and thank you.

11 comments:

  1. Following your page on Facebook now as well! Tell me more about this fee thing. I hadn't heard about it.

    Hope your neck loosens up soon! ...or maybe not? Keep on that massage schedule as long as you want? :-)

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    1. Thanks for the follow, Katie!

      I totally don't know everything about the facebook thing, but they started tracking "organic reach" which is the amount of your followers that they share your post with, vs the full amount they would share with if you pay them. So if you have 500 followers on FB, maybe only 200 would get your post shared on their feed. Of those 200, maybe on 125 would actually see it if they are regular FB users. It's just frustrating because I hate twitter, and that seems to be what everybody recommends in order to combat all this. *end rant*

      I had massage therapy today. It was lovely. :)

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  2. I know your pain. I just recently started PT 3 weeks ago for about 4 years of compounding sciatic/piraformis pain. Anyway, I go twice a week and have NO one to take my kids. So I schelp my 4 and 2 year old with me and try not to cringe while I hear them throwing the therapy balls all around the clinic while I lay there and try to do my exercises and get my prescribed massage and heat wrap. Thankfully the clinic usually only has 2 other clients when I've been there so one of the PT assistants has been wrangling my kids for me.

    Good luck!

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    1. My husband deals with sciatic pain - that's no joke! I'm so sorry you have had all that awfulness for so long! And seriously, if I was megarich I would send you tons of money to hire sitters for your therapy appointments. Until then, just pretend your kiddos are practicing for the NBA. Good luck and I'll be praying for you to heal up quickly!

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  3. UGH. Sorry about your back/neck issues. I had the same and after a 10 day migraine (I was darn near suicidal by the end), I finally went to a Chiro who does Sublaxation treatment. After the first treatment, I slept 13hrs.! It was amazing! So, I hope treatment helps you and clears up the issue!

    As for the FB thing, I don't know what they are doing, but they are ticking me off. It's not just issues with the blogs. Regular pages STILL aren't working right. :/ And it's annoying. As for losing traffic, you may want to pay once or twice and just tell everyone to follow you through the actual page because you won't be doing it through FB since they now want to charge for something that should be FREE. You could also consider contacting several other bloggers and all getting together to complain and ask your followers to do the same. Because it is REDIC! Either way, good luck. I follow you through my Google account... which is free.

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    1. Thanks for the Google follow! I'm thankful there are other ways people can follow because it's been soooooo frustrating. I've been tempted to just throw in the towel. About half of my blog traffic came from FB. I'm sure other people are dealing with this; I'll have to figure out what they are doing.

      I've heard good things about the chiropractor for neck pain, and she is next on our list if this therapy doesn't work.

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  4. Discovered your blog - like it - need distraction - thanks!

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    1. Hi! Thanks for reading and commenting! Hope to see you again :)

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  5. I'm so sorry to hear about all your aches and pains....I have back issues and when it flares up, there is nothing worse, so I have an idea what you are going through....hate not being able to do my regular activities.

    I had no idea facebook was doing this, clearly I rarely update my fan page!! Guess I won't be in the future either.....that's too bad, I can't imagine that many people will really use facebook if they start charging....but maybe people feel stuck with it? Maybe it's time to move to twitter...

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    1. I was actually thinking of you and hot yoga when all this started. Do you think the hot yoga helps you feel better when your back is well enough to go? I'm looking into exercise I can do now, while my foot, hip, and shoulders are out of commission. (I mean, they can't handle the weight bearing pounding and repetitive movements of my sports, but I think I could handle something I could modify).

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  6. Well you know I will follow you to the ends of the earth...that's not stalkerish at all, is it? ;)

    Feel better girlfriend!! Lunch in the new year when you can swing it!! xoxo

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