Oh The Aches and the Pains!

The Roberts House is in pain! WEll...just the girls this time. Clara had a mishap on Sunday afternoon that involved a nasty fall from the monkey bars at the park. Apparently the child has NO monkey in her whatsoever because those monkey bars just get her every time! She loves to cross them and would do it all day every day if you let her. And Sunday she wanted to try to do it herself. So I said okay, but told her I was still going to stand right beside her. And I did stand right beside her. But she fell so fast that she was on the ground before I could even begin to move toward saving her. She fell HARD and did not even put out her hands to save herself. It was a brain rattling, teeth jarring, knock the breath so far out of you kind of fall. I still shudder when I replay it in my mind. We immediately went on home and she settled down, but pretty much consistently complained of pain in her lower half much of the night. But she was moving in a way that made me feel like she must be all right. I had her sleep with me last night just to be certain. This morning she was sore, as I thought she would be and I loaded her up with Motrin and sent her out the door. But this afternoon when I picked her up she seemed reluctant to go to dance and even asked if she had to go. This was a signal that something was quite possibly VERY, VERY wrong with my baby girl. Under NO circumstances would she EVER want to miss dance. She eats, sleeps and breathes dance. She arabesques and plie's her way around our house like you've never seen before. And Mondays are her life blood...she simply MUST dance! So when she expressed that the pain was too much I knew the girl was for real. She did go on to dance, but her first words when she came out were "Can we go to the doctor?" So I headed on over to Urgent Care with her and had her all checked out. Nothing appears to be broken and they didn't feel like she had a concussion (that one had not really crossed my mind until then!) so she was given instructions to ice 4 times a day for a couple of days and then to switch to hot soaks to work out the bruising and tenderness. And so ...that's the story on my bruised little ballerina girl.

As for me...my neck and shoulder are killing me. Like burning, hurting, I can't distract myself from it kind of pain. This, incidentally, is not a new pain. It's just much worse than it has been this past week. I actually have been struggling with it for, oh, about 6 years now...give or take. I wish I could say I had some glamorous injury or what not...but that's not the case. I simply rolled over one morning to get out of bed and it totally locked up. like TIGHT. Like, I thought I would be paralyzed if I moved kind of pain. The chiropractor could not even begin to touch it at the time because of the inflamation and tenderness. He tried deep tissue massage and other things for a week with no real luck and then referred me to another doctor for the purposes of getting cortisone shots in my neck. At that point I expressed my deepest gratitude and said 'Thanks...but no thanks...no needles in the neck, thank you very much." and headed on out of there. Instead, I did double doses of naproxen sodium for a week and it finally got the swelling down to where I could move again. And ever since then I have struggled with it trying to lock up and hurting from time to time. I sleep on an orthopedic pillow, which helps a lot...but lately...nothing is really helping. It hurts to lay on my right side. And my right shoulder blade just burns and stings now in the day. And my fingers keep getting that weird tickling sensation like they might be falling asleep. And my trusted naproxen isn't really helping at all! So...before it goes full blown craZy I decided I need to seek some professional help and hopefully, the chiropractor will be able to make some adjustments to realign me in a way that will stop this annoying shoulder pain. Hey, if he can make it stop hurting for just an hour or so I will gladly take that at this point. It's MISERY!!! Hey...if I am seeking medical attention...you KNOW it's got to be bad. And then there's the small point that I absolutely HATE and I DO mean HATE for people to touch my bones...at all...in any shape, form or fashion!!! So now you know...I'm desperate for some relief!

And that's the aches and pains chronicles of the girls of Roberts place!