7-9-2024

Hey all! Some of you may have noticed that I've had a sale running for a couple weeks now and I figured I might as well let you know what's going on, if nothing else I'm sure there's other Zebras going through the same situation and you aren't alone!

I'm one of the dazzle that's been severely affected by the periodontal aspect of the condition. I'm not sure if it's because of the accident or because of the EDS or just a combination of both, but I was in a pretty bad car accident at 13. I took a really nasty hit to the jaw which broke a couple teeth and started my journey with TMJ, and by the time I was in my mid 20s my first molar broke in half...on a tortilla chip. Since then I've dealt with continuous chipping and breaking teeth. We suspect that the blow I took in the accident was enough to kill the pulp due to the already shoddy EDS connective tissues holding my teeth into place, so despite taking incredibly good care of my teeth they died from the inside out, eventually losing strength and breaking. Added into this due to gastroparesis I'm chronically in a state of malnutrition because I don't absorb enough nutrients, and even with added supplementation it's very challenging to keep my levels up.

I'd started the process of getting dentures almost 10 years ago but life got in the way, and since it's been one of those things kept on the backburner due to not having access to care or not having the time. Over the last year it's gotten to the point that it can't be let go any longer. The sensitivity has gotten bad enough I can't eat anything cold, which has taken all my healthy safe foods and snacks (yogurt, hummus, fruits etc) off the list of things I can eat so I haven't been eating nearly enough for the last 6 months or so. I've had to be put on antibiotics several times over the last year to treat recurrent infections and have finally reached the point that if I don't get them taken out I'll end up with sepsis because the infection can't be controlled any longer.

Due to the shoddy connective tissue and my teeth just crumbling if you put any pressure on them I'm going to require surgical extractions, and because in America teeth are a luxury so that's not something my insurance will cover. I've thankfully found a good oral surgeon nearby, but I'm looking at $4,000 to remove the 3 teeth that are currently causing problems and dig out the root of one that broke off at the gumline last year. So doing the only thing I can to raise $$$ and running a sale, we've unfortunately kept having unexpected situations like this come up over the last couple months and it's been impossible to save anything.

We are however currently working with a several week delay in processing time while we catch up with the orders that have been delayed due to a hand injury preventing me from being able to perform necessary aspects of work, which managed to coincide with my apprentice being out several weeks grieving a difficult loss. As I've said for many years, I'm a walking example of Murphy's Law 😅 Thankfully my hands are mostly back to normal now. I'm able to make the thumb combination splints again and am back up to normal speed, and my apprentice is back to working normal hours. I'm estimating it'll take about 2-3 months before we have everything fully back on track and are working with normal processing time, but we're finally able to really get digging into the delayed orders and should be able to get a great deal of it caught up over the next couple weeks.

I'm also *once again* dealing with issues with the messaging system and now even several aspects of overall site function and performance, which I'm fighting to get help from WIX with. It's been a slow process with everything that's been going on, but I am currently working on rebuilding the site through Shopify, I'm sure you guys are just as frustrated with all the nonsense and continual issues with messaging as I am, and I'm appalled at the complete lack of support there is whenever there's an issue more serious than a website setting that needs attention. I'm very much looking forward to finally moving away from all the difficulties and having a website that actually works.

As always, we thank you guys for your patience and continued support as we navigate through some difficult situations ❤

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7-4-2024

Happy 4th of July!

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I didn't realize it had been so long since I updated this section! We've been busy busy busy and I just haven't found the time. This is going to be a rather long bit of a ramble as we've had so much going on over the last couple months and there are so many facets to the delays we're currently experiencing. This section of the site has kinda become my little blog, a way of connecting and keeping everyone informed, and being AuDHD I have a tendency to ramble...

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So we're currently working with a several week delay due to a couple huge factorsn that were unexpected and entirely out of our control. In mid March, just days after I finally got everything completely caught up with no open orders and able to work on orders when they came in so they'd go out in a couple days...I developed trigger thumb in both hands, tennis elbow, and further aggravated the thoracic outlet syndrome and cranio-cervical instability I've had for many years. I made it through 8 months of working 80-100 hours a week catching up from my near death experience and subsequent extended hospital stay last May and it's like all my joints just decided since we don't need to work doubles every day anymore it's time to completely give out. This was compounded by my apprentices traumatic loss of her service dog Benny, she was unable to work for most of May so I was completely on my own with nearly non functional hands for a while there which caused everything to get backed up pretty quickly. In particular I was entirely unable to make the IP/MCP combination splints at all up until a couple weeks ago, the injury caused me to subconsciously change *something* about how I'm holding or bending the wire on the final step shaping them so what's normally a quick couple minute process turned into me mangling them beyond repair and needing to remake them. I kept trying and trying but by the start of May I realized it's just not something I'd be able to do for the time being and continuing to try was only making matters worse, not only in needing to remake them all but also because it was causing a great deal of frustration which ramps up my ADHD and anxiety and throws executive function out the window. So I added notices to a few areas of the site as well as in the product description of all variations of the splint to ensure everyone would know when placing their order that they'd be delayed and took a 6 week break from making them until I felt like I could successfully do it again. I finally reached that point about two weeks ago and am working through the delayed orders as quickly as possible, but I'm still not fully healed (yay for EDS and our shoddy extended healing time!) so moving slower than I'd like, and the thumb splints are still quite challenging and take a lot longer to get shaped properly than they should. The last 2 months have been a continuous example of Murphy's Law (what can go wrong, will go wrong) for both myself and my apprentice, making it much more difficult to catch up. She was out a couple more weekends last month to deal with unexpected situations-first the transmission on her 4 year old car went forcing her to take time out for 5 different appointments with the dealership before she ultimately gave up arguing with them to fix it and was forced to trade in for a new car, then last weekend was out because a rock flew out of nowhere-not even any cars in front of her!-and cracked the windshield all the way across and it has to be replaced. I've been struggling because my body is finally rebelling against the last year of working far too much and not nearly taking care of myself so my physical (and mental honestly) health are absolutely tanked. For the last two months I've been working overnight 1-2 nights a week and only sleeping about 6 hours a night otherwise and have been unable to eat, and it's caught up with me. Then we get to top that off my car needing serious repairs so that I can't really drive anywhere other than what's within a 5 minute radius and the dental work I've been unable to get done for the last couple years taking a turn for the worse, so now it's *emergency* dental work and I live in America where having teeth is a luxury so it's not covered by my insurance, creating the need to run sales to bolster business so that I can pull in enough funding to pay out of pocket for both my teeth and my car. And the icing on the cake? I didn't find out until last month that the EDS Global Learning Conference is 3 weeks earlier than I was expecting, then wasn't informed until Monday that that the normal 350 sample splints I make to be added to the goodie bags is going to be 700 this year and they have to be shipped out by Wednesday next week to make it in time with overnight shipping. And my apprentice hadn't made it through grinding them nearly as far as I'd expected, so basically I've got 6 days to make 500 splints from the start and do final shaping on another 200. It's just...it's a lot 😢

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I'd be lying if I said I wasn't struggling right now. I feel incredibly defeated. I've put absolutely everything I had to give into working over the last year fighting to get things back on track after my hospitalization last May, I've barely set foot outside the entire time other than the quick runs to the post office to drop off order, even thinking about doing something fun or social hasn't been an option, and I've cut back on really basic needs to fit in more time for work...just to end up right back where I was this time last year.

*BUT*…if there's one thing I can say for absolutely sure it's that my dedication to this and my determination to keep everything running smoothly are unparalleled qualities that no one cane take from me. I'm probably going to spend the next week being incredibly frustrated and stressed, but when I manage to get all 700 of the sponsorship splints made and shipped in that short a time it's not just going to rekindle the fire in me but stoke it to a roaring all consuming flame and I'll be unstoppable again. Last year when I was finally able to reliably work again I had 380 open orders dating as far back as January, I'd only just received the 14g nickel free steel wire again-the one that's used the most out of all the wire options-after an 8 month backorder, I was still having to hand sand every single length of titanium so that it would take a high shine in the polisher, I had barely any help with splint production, and I was in the process of moving out of the mold infested house that had made me so sick. This year is much better-I currently have 182 open orders, I have help this time, I have all wires in stock (and plenty of them!), and while my health is struggling right now from the abuse I put my body through over the last year (and last two months in particular) I'm still WAY better off than last year. There were a number of health issues I was dealing with that I thought were long COVID because they started a couple months after I was sick at the very beginning of the pandemic that were actually the result of mold toxicity that have been clearing up over the last 8 months since I moved out of there, even the palpitations and high blood pressure I'd been fighting to get under control are mostly gone now, as well as some neurological and autonomic dysfunction, and subsequently my mental health has improved significantly. At this point I'm hoping to be back on track by the end of the month, there will probably still be some delays with larger and more complicated orders but the general workflow should be in place again. For now I'm going to tentatively say we'll be completely caught up again by the end of August, basing that estimate on how long it took for me to get things generally back on track last year and that I did it largely without help and with double the orders I have now.

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As frustrating as these delays are-for you and I alike-I have to continually remind myself that this is just the cost of doing what I do.  While I pump out 40-50 orders a week and when things are on track they all go out within days EDS is a difficult and incredibly fickle condition to live with, and at the end of the day I'm just one lone disabled neurodivergent...and as much as I think I can sometimes realistically I just can't do it all all the time. The trade off of my splint prices being so low is that there isn't wiggle room when something goes wrong. The much higher prices you see with other businesses gives them the financial leeway to handle unexpected situations without much disruption, whereas my pricing is set so that it exactly covers the necessary business expenses and paying myself just enough that I can cover my bills. There's no profit, nothing extra at the end of the day for me to be able to put the shop in vacation mode for a few weeks so I can heal from injuries or just have the ability to step back for a bit and get orders caught up when something happens. I don't have the luxury of taking breaks or hiring extra people (and hiring people is just as much an issue of my disability, I'm not able to reliably work the same hours every day or same days every week and it wouldn't be fair to expect an employee to be ok with taking random unexpected time off when my health flares up for days or I've been unable to sleep the night before). And I don't want to raise prices again, I've already had to hike things up twice over the last year because inflation is kicking my behind. The prices of everything from the metals I make the splints with to the boxes I put them in to ship have jumped up at least 30% and I couldn't keep eating the costs, my bills have nearly doubled in the new place because it's so much bigger but all the extra space I have now was an absolute necessity to be able to fit the things I need for work. I no longer have my work area, my apprentice's workbench, the polishing station, and the "office" all together into 150 sq ft and it's so much better and easier to work now. It's a trade off.

 

I've been here before and will undoubtedly be here again, it's unrealistic to think that I won't have more issues with my health or unexpected situations pop up down the road. The delays we're dealing with right now are the same situation after hurricane Maria when it took 4 months just for the post offices to run on time again and 6 months before I had access to power and running water in my home, this is what it was like in the beginning of COVID when everything was shut down and shipping was extremely unreliable leaving me to have to remake about half of the orders that were shipped internationally and never made it, and it was the same situation after I was hospitalized last year. It's difficult, it's frustrating, it's stressful, and it's exhausting...but I am wholly dedicated to serving my community of bendy buddies and one thing I can promise you is that I won't give up or give in. I will continue to pour everything I've got, my heart and my soul, into this and work relentlessly until we're back on track

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I'm truly sorry for the unexpected delays and for any inconveniences they may cause, and we appreciate everyone's patience and continued support while we navigate this difficult time. Rest assured I'm doing everything in my power to get your splints to you as quickly as humanly possible ❤