Plot Twist

 

It would've been perfect. It could've been perfect. It should've been perfect.

But it wasn't.

At 3am on Christmas Day, with the snow falling, having the white Christmas that everyone dreams about...there I sat - bawling my eyes out.

Let me rewind a little...

The first signs of nausea started unexpectadly 6 hours earlier. I took some anti- nausea medication, hoping that it would pass. It didn't. By midnight, I was really dizzy and feeling sick. It felt as though I was sleeping on a waterbed. By 2am, whenever my husband turned over in bed, it felt like a tsunami. So eventually I got up and went to sit on the couch. I looked at all the unopened gifts underneath the Christmas tree and started to cry. I've come to know my symptoms. These were the classic telltale signs of a full on flare. And there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.

I'd been planning Christmas for weeks. I ate well, slept well, exercised well, paced myself, practised good time management, shopped online, avoided the mall, avoided stress, and was well prepared for everything. Everything that is, except actually getting sick on Christmas Day. 

Sometimes you can do everything right and it still goes wrong.

I was frustrated, disappointed, but mostly I was angry. Angry, because it seemed like all the preparations were for nothing. I mean seriously, there are 364 other days when I could've had a flare and it wouldn't have mattered as much. But it was Christmas Day. I'd made a new Sausage, Chestnut and Apple stuffing I was looking forward to trying and we'd planned some fun party games for after dinner. And now there would be none of that. At least not for me.

But I suppose that is the nature of this condition. It's unpredictable. The symptoms are sneaky and can come without warning. They can happen to anyone at anytime. Even people like me, who has spent the last year of my life trying to make lemonade from the 10 tonnes of lemons that were dumped on my doorstep when I got this miserable disorder. People like me, who try to view this disorder through a different lens and preach my own brand of Pinterest style positivity from my blog. The truth is sometimes you don't feel positive about it. At all.  This disorder just sucks and you have a right to be angry about it and work through those feelings.

For a while I sat there feeling sorry for myself. That is until I was haunted by the ghost of my Christmas past (2018 - most miserable Christmas ever - never be repeated) so I stopped right there and I didn't allow myself to give in and succumb to those feelings. I didn't want to sink to that level of despair. Christmas was still going to be fun for my family. And all the advance preparations helped to make things a little easier for them. I sat on the couch for most of the day giving instructions for dinner preparation and when it was ready, I sat down for dinner with them, even though I couldn't eat it myself. I wore the silly tissue paper party hat that comes in the Christmas crackers. I laughed at the corny jokes. Oh, and I even had a sip of muscato after my anti nausea meds kicked in (now, I don't recommend that you do that, but that's what I did!)

This was in my fortune cookie on Dec 29th - HA!!!

With this illness it is probably wise for me to expect that things could go wrong. I know that sounds pessimistic, perhaps even fatalistic. But personally I think that it is realistic. I've had to cancel too many events and activities to think otherwise. And like a woman at the end of the third trimester of pregnancy - with an emergency bag packed and sitting by the front door - you have to prepared and ready. Because...

Always be prepared for a plot twist. Prepare for the worst, but always hope for the best.

If it goes wrong, I won't be at all surprised, because I fully I expected it. But if it goes right...well, you better believe I'll write a nice postive post about it.

And by the way... the Boxing Day leftovers were great!