#ChronicChristmas Day 9: Build a Snowman

No need to get all label-y. Snow Person. Or, a unicorn, an icy sand castle, or an igloo.

The point is to regress to your childhood. To a snowy afternoon, when your mom bundled you up, and told you to go out and play. To remember standing with your head thrown back and your tongue out, trying to catch snowflakes. To make snow angels, have a snowball fight, share secrets with a friend in the snow fort, and come back inside covered in snow, with your cheeks as red as apples with the cold.

On the day of the first snow, my mom would always make homemade hot chocolate, and delicious buns, and we’d warm up from the inside.

Snow might be hard to come by at this particular point in time, and not just for those of you who live south of the equator. El Niño is messing with my ability to bask in the white stuff, but there are so many other ways to have fun. 

If it’s windy, you can fly a kite. If you’re up for it, toss a ball around with your kids or your dog, and if the latter, ignored the slobber. It’s all part of the experience. If you’re having a crappy day, stay inside and colour or play a board game.

C’mon, let’s go and play.

What did you do when you were a child and your mom threw you out of the house to play?

(My apologies if this post means you’re humming a particular song for the rest of the day)



#ChronicChristmas is an Advent calendar of tips for a sane holiday season with a chronic illness. Check back tomorrow for the next tip. To see all the posts in the series, click the #ChronicChristmas label below this post.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Farber’s Disease: Could Your Child’s Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis Be Misdiagnosed?

Image
Joint inflammation or contractures. Nodules (small lumps under the skin or in other tissues). A weakened or hoarse voice. Children with these symptoms may have been diagnosed with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) or other types of juvenile arthritis . But do they actually have JIA or do they have Farber’s disease? An equine digression When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras. This is an adage in the medical world that encourages doctors to not wander off exploring rare and esoteric reasons for a patient’s symptoms. Because most of the time, that hoof beat of a rash likely isn’t the plague, the joint pain more likely a type of arthritis than the bends (especially if the person has never scuba dived) and you get the picture. But once in a while, it actually is a zebra. And even if it’s first identified as a horse, eventually, the stripes come through. It took five years of my parents running around to different doctors before one finally recognized that I had...
Read more

13 Things to Know for Rheumatoid Arthritis Newbies + Facebook Live

Image
Getting a diagnosis of any type of chronic illness can throw you for loop. There is so much to know and you have so little energy. My new slideshow for HealthCentral collects 13 things you need to know as an RA newbie : "Receiving a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a moment of strange duality. On one hand, you may be relieved to finally have answers for the symptoms you’ve been experiencing. On the other, it can be incredibly overwhelming to find out you have a chronic illness. Wrapping your head around all the new factors RA brings into your life is a long-term process. Here are some of the things you need to know." See the slideshow on HealthCentral . And in case you missed it, here is the Facebook Live I did yesterday talking about this topic:   
Read more