10 Causes to Neck Pain

You won't notice it for the first few minutes. But within two or three pleasantly exchanged sentences, you'll see it. I'll lift my right arm and begin to rub the back of the left side of my neck.

It feels so good. I'll press on the muscle that runs behind my ear and roll my neck, hoping you're not thinking this is my nonverbal plea for you to Please stop talking.

My neck hurts. All the time. To the point where Tylenol has now been added to my daily food groups of Twinkies, double espressos, and Hershey's kisses.

This morning, I had had enough, so I turned to everyone's Doctor in a box, WebMD:

Here's what I need to do, before I can do anything about this pinch between my head and body:

Diagnose. There were so many causes to neck pain given on the site, and none of them pretty. How the articles took me from obnoxious annoyance to 12-hour surgeries at the Mayo Clinic in three breezy steps, I don't know.

But let's start at the beginning, with the diagnosis.

Question 1: Is there physical strain in your life?

You know--there is. I'll stop carrying laundry baskets.

Question 2: Are you hunching?

Funny you should mention it. Pulling my shoulders off my knees as we speak.

Question 3: Any occasion of whiplash?

If you count how many times a day I have to snap my head back to make sure my 7^th grade son gets off PS4 when I tell him to, about nine times a day.

Question 4: Pinched nerves?

[It's too late for me but not too late for you. Don't google causes of pinched nerves. You'll have 19 of the 20]

Question 5: Could you have iPad neck, laptop neck, smartphone neck, tablet neck?

I refuse to answer on the grounds of confronting the issue of best use of my time.

Question 6: Rough night no pillows?

No answer is best but allow me to say this, this item would be up there with spouse refusing to get CPAP mask in the event of marital dissolution papers. #pillowrobber #selfishsleeper

Question 7: Up till 3:00 a.m. reading again, Alexandra?

Like you could put the book down when the preschool administrator walks in on the new mother and the ex-wife both showing up to pick up Daxson at the same time!!

Question 8: Standing tall?

Thanks for the reminder. Promising right now, won't let number of writing rejections determine my posture.

Question 9: Target bags too heavy?

Shuttup.

Question 10: Eye rolling so pronounced it involves the neck?

Who is this? Put the medical director back on.

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After you've answered these 10 questions honestly with a capital H, you can isolate the cause and make the diagnosis necessary to begin treatment. Isolating the cause is essential. Once a diagnosis has been made, you can work on choosing your treatment option.

My personal possibilities to care include:

 

--Appropriate exercise: Prescription: come home with TWO bags from Target to balance out one-shouldered shopper's droop.

--Restore range of motion: aaaaaaaand I now have the perfect reason to justify the $100 a month pretty yoga studio that is conveniently on the way home from the grocery store.

Here is the specialized treatment plan advised:

 

Ice. In my mimosa? I wouldn't have it any other way.

Heat: Like that tropical warm blow dryer that only comes with a blowout from a drybar.
MMMMMMMMMmassage: Say no more.

WebMD left me with this final pearl of wisdom: “Analyze home and work environment in order to ensure that you're not re-injuring yourself."

I think I found the answer: Bending over to empty the dishwasher will just aggravate my symptoms.

Thereby proving WebMD's final caveat: Be sure the problem of neck pain is not just that pain in the neck.

 

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Air Conditioning and Private Schools: All in One

I was raised with a long list of conservative Dos and Don’ts of life. I abided by most. The ones that made sense, like “Don’t let your lips touch the spigot when drinking from a public water fountain,” were easy to follow. The questionable ones, “Stay away from that mentally unstable girl/boy that always gets into trouble,” were harder to follow, because those kind of ballstothewall beings are my favorite flavor in people.

Then there was the no negotiating if you want to remain recognized by this family don't-ism, ”DO NOT LIVE WITH SOMEONE IF YOU’RE NOT MARRIED!"  Loud enough for me to hear, even if it was whispered to me by my mother.

I never did live with anybody, not that I wasn’t asked *brushes imaginary lint off shoulders.*
The fear of being dead to my family kept me from co-signing any co-lease for cohabitating in a co-op. However, as there always is a however with most insights, I am now of a different mindset due to the emotional and psychological duress that could have been avoided, *nice non-cohabitating girl or not*, had I lived with my husband first.

It was our first married night at home together. As I dumped out the laundry basket full of our first shared comingled his and hers clothing, there was a sudden shock of a view, fleeting, but enough of a sight that I prayed I'd been mistaken.

“Did you forget to empty out tissues from your pants pocket before throwing them in the laundry?” I asked my husband of ten days. "Because I just dumped this out and saw what looked like shreds of tissue that had gone through the dryer."

“Nope,” his answer came back quickly. He didn't even look up from ESPN.

And just like that, what could have been an arms entwined google eyed experience of what a metaphor of our coupling this laundry was; turned out, instead, to be a whispered shameful conversation at lunch with my girlfriend the next day.

“Oh my God,” I checked over both shoulders to make sure no one else was listening. “I need to tell you something. His underwear…” I stuttered. “It looked like a lace doily. Like the first ones ever made. I swear, the Smithsonian called asking for it.”

“Get.out.,” my friend mouthed back, disgusted, “like, how old do you think it was? ‘Cuz that’s just gross.”

“I know, I know,” my confession continued. “I just couldn’t get the holey Swiss cheese memory of the backside of his boxers out of my mind, not even, you know, later…”

“You gotta tell him it’s just not right, and that it turns you off. He’ll listen to that.”

“But what can I do? When I brought it up… he…he… he was almost proud of how old his boxers were. He bragged, ‘yup, had those babies since my fraternity days. No one milks a buck like me.’ ”

My single friend echoed my thought, “Ewwwwwwwwww…”

With her reaction, I decided to keep what happened next, to myself.

My husband lovingly double folded the threadbare overused tissue he called underwear, and as though delivering the golden tablets to Joseph Smith himself, placed them in our shared dresser drawer, right next to my honeymoon trousseau of days old satin underthings.

Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

20 years later of lace doily as underwear, and my spouse hasn't changed (forgive the pun). His backside still looks as if I'm watching Doris Day through those gauzy filters she began asking for in the 1970s. His reasoning, God love him, is clear. "You call it air conditioning, I call it private school for the kids."

Frugal or saintly, I can't decide. Either way, my children, Cohabitation. No matter what I tell you in my parenting feverishness, consider the option.

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