Merry, Happy Struggling Through Holidays
The holidays are a time of joy, celebration, and family. There is gift-giving, caroling, holiday parties, and more food than anyone can imagine. I love the holidays just as much as the next person, but sometimes, the holidays can be difficult, especially for those with chronic illness. This is going to be a controversial statement, but I stand by it: the cut-backs on social gatherings during the holidays this year due to the pandemic is a bit of a relief for me. It’s not that I won’t miss seeing extended family members or having a cocktail with colleagues, but the recovery period that crowded events demand from me means that all of these celebrations, back-to-back, take a serious toll on my health.
I spent the last few years sick throughout the final stretch of Christmas. Work-related parties for my job and my significant other’s, holiday parties with friends, family holiday events, going to local holiday festivals, etc. It ends up being exhausting - and it also exposes me to many different pathogens in a short period of time. Coincidentally, all the biggest holidays happen during the peak of cold, flu, pertussis, sinus infection, etc season. Because of my primary immunodeficiency, this means that I end up sick after the first few events leading up to Christmas. Once I am sick, I struggle through a fog to just “get through” the rest of the holiday season. By the time I get to Christmas Day with my immediate family, I am surviving on Vick’s, tissues, sinus rinses, hot tea, and medications. I sit on the couch, half-awake, barely able to enjoy the festivities.
The first few times this happened, I was still undiagnosed and thought that it was just a coincidence that I kept ending up sick. The first holiday season after being diagnosed, I reached out to a veteran mom of three sons with a primary immunodeficiency. She’s had something in the realm of 14-15 years of experience of life with PI. I was hoping she could give me some magic secret, but the advice she gave me sounded too simple and also a little impossible at the same time: pace yourself, put healthy foods and fuel into your body to support it as much as possible, and that it’s okay to say no to some things if I need the rest. In hindsight, those seemingly “not magical” answers are the key to all of it.
I used to think that I had to be at everything and couldn’t say no to some events (especially work-related ones) while going to the ones I really wanted to. I stubbornly continued my same approach, and as usual, I ended up sick in early December - with pertussis this time. Talk about misery. I was so sick that I still ended up missing some of the work events that I felt like I wasn’t allowed to miss anyways. After having to learn the lesson over and over again the hard way, I have made it okay for myself to rest and to skip some events. I have realized that the only events worth risking infection afterwards are the ones that I most want to go to. I have given myself permission to do the things I need to in order to stay healthy throughout the entire holiday season.
2020 has given me the perfect opportunity to practice the advice that I got from that veteran PI mom: so many holiday events are cancelled. Like, almost all of them are cancelled. While some may say that this will make the holiday season less special, it gives me the opportunity for it to be even more special with the ones I care about most. It gives me the easy route to being healthier for the most important parts of the holiday season - spending the time with my immediate family. We will still decorate, bake cookies, watch holiday movies together, and exchange gifts. We will still cook more food than we ever need to eat. I will have all the best parts of the season without sacrificing my health and muddling through it.
Perhaps you have GI issues that make holiday foods difficult, or perhaps you struggle with fatigue and don’t have the energy for so many events. Perhaps your allergies/sensitivities get overwhelmed by the Christmas trees and holiday scented everything that are everywhere this time of year. If your illness can also be a difficult struggle throughout the holiday season, go ahead and give yourself the permission to take care of your health first. Give yourself permission to not sacrifice your health for the things you think you have to do, because the truth is that you deserve to be healthy enough to enjoy the season like anyone else, even if you have to do it in your own way.
Chronically yours,
Jen
