I Got “Barbie Botox” Eeek!

I am not, shall we say, a relaxed person. I’m a Virgo, first born. There was never a hope in hell I was going to be a chill, easy going type of a chick! It’s Type-A all the way for me, baby!

But hey, we Type A’s get-shit-done. Need 4,576 things done at the same time? Give it to me to handle. Cause it’ll be done by 11am. And I’ll have gone to the gym, made the kids lunches, planned a next year’s vacation, straightened my house and cranked out a blog post.

But with my personality comes….well….a fairly stressed out individual! God help me, I dream of what it would be like to be a “ehh….I’ll do it tomorrow” or “let’s sip coffee slowly and stare out the window.”  Nope. Boy do I wish I knew how to do that!

So what comes with my (a lot of the time fully self-inflicted) stress? Tight, tight, tiiiiiggghhhttt muscles!

When you’re an intense person like me, it’s inevitable to have shoulder pain. My default posture is to have my shoulders higher than my earlobes, lol. I have to remind myself every few minutes to breathe and relax my shoulders.

Over the years I’ve had people comment to me “relax your shoulders” because they can see how tight and raised they are. I always laugh and say “I’m trying! I’m trying so hard! They just won’t go down!”

The shoulder pain stems from a few things. My general disposition, my teeth grinding, being a side sleeper and lifting weights.

My body manifests my Type-A personality even when I sleep because I grind my teeth. Yes, I wear a retainer. If I didn’t have that retainer I’d have no teeth! No matter how peaceful I feel when I go to sleep, my subconscious kicks in and I grind like nobodies business.

The grinding makes my face, neck and shoulder muscles hurt like absolute hell. I spoke with my Dentist about it and he recommended getting Botox in my jaw muscles to help relax them.

A lot of dentist offices offer this (some insurance covers it, mine does not.) Because my dentist office doesn’t offer Botox injections I get mine from Dr. Carmen Kavali in Atlanta.

I get Botox injected into my masseter and temporalis muscles in order to relax my jaw to help with the grinding and subsequent pain. It works. Wow does it work.

In fact, the first tell-tale sign I need Botox again won’t be the wrinkles, it’ll be that I woke up with a “turn off all the lights and don’t even breathe loudly cause my head is killing me” level pain from grinding!

We will cover masseter and temporalist Botox  more in future blog posts so be sure to get my newsletter to read about that soon.

However, over the years I’ve found that while yes, the Botox absolutely, without a doubt, helps with my jaw and neck pain, I still have residual neck pain from all of the other factors I mentioned earlier.

So where am I going with all of this? Allow me to introduce you to two words: “Barbie. Botox.”

The Botox is injected right into the Trap muscle in a few different locations.

Always, always, always go to a Board Certified injector to get Botox. You want someone fully trained to administer Botox.

If you live in the Atlanta area, I highly recommend Dr. Carmen Kavali and her entire team at Monarch Plastic Surgery. I’ve been going to this office for years. Dr. Kavali is actually an Allergan teacher. Allergan sells Botox, Juvederm, Kybella, CoolSculpting and more. They use Dr. K to train doctors and injectable administrators all over the country – so her office knows what they are doing!

Getting Botox into your trap muscles is not the same as getting it injected into your face. This is a large muscle group. Please, please, please see a Certified Medical Plastic Surgeons office to have the procedure done.

Contact Monarch Plastic Surgery!

The trap’s are a big muscle so a “heavy pour” is required! For my shoulders 30 units of Botox were used per side.

I have a high tolerance for pain. I don’t find that Botox or filler hurts. It’s awkward, and there can be little stings, and it’s by no means the equivalent of a lovely massage or candlelight dinner, but I wouldn’t use the word “painful.”

I don’t even like needles, but I still am not bothered by getting Botox. Perhaps I know how wonderful the results will be. My jaw pain will dissipate giving way to better sleep, and I’ll be a few wrinkles less, so it’s worth it to me!

I found Barbie Botox to be even less painful than when it’s injected in your face. I hardly felt the injection into my trap muscles at all! It was a piece of cake (Thanks, Anna, for doing such a great job!)

All Botox injections can take between two to three weeks to take effect. The same is true for Barbie Botox.

Here is what my shoulders and neckline look like three days after getting the Barbie Botox. I forgot to take the photo prior to, but this is only a few days post the injection, so it by no means has taken full effect.

I only got the trap muscle Botox injections a few days ago so it’s still too early to say whether it worked or not. My sister is a high strung person like me so she’s so curious whether it helps with shoulder pain.

Be sure to sign up for my newsletter to get the updated verdict and before and after photo! I can hardly wait to see and feel the effect! And in the meantime, I have a few other things on my ‘to do list’ to take care of…. 🙂