Laughable, bearable lupus symptoms? For real?
After a long weekend away with my grown-up girlfriends, I'm refreshed, renewed, and ready to tackle the world! It's amazing how great it feels to just break away for a couple of nights. My girlfriends and I had a great time - we talked (free of interruptions!), we dined, we spa'ed - with no sippy cups or diapers in sight. Of course, I was thrilled to see my girls on Sunday night after being away...but boy, did I enjoy my girls' weekend!
I'll tell you a little bit more about the weekend in an upcoming post, but I want to first tell you about the day before I left...which was last Thursday. Johnny was away for the evening, I was trying to get a million things done before I left, and the girls were in rare form. It was a beautiful day, so they'd been playing outside with the neighbor kids for hours. And as is often the case, the transition from playing outside to eating dinner inside was a tough one, so there was much kicking and screaming. (Okay, so no actual kicking OR screaming...but lots of tears.) But in the midst of Deirdre crying, complaining and being irrational about leaving her friends, and Bernie crying and whining in an attempt to imitate her sister, I found myself smiling. Because in less than 24 hours, it was all going to be over. I would be on a plane to a spa, and the crying and carrying on wouldn't be heard for miles.
I found it fascinating that all I needed to keep a chin up that night was the fact that there was a definitive end to the chaos. Simply knowing that the rigamarole wouldn't and couldn't go on forever made it completely bearable. In fact, it almost became laughable.
And that's one thing that doesn't come naturally with lupus - finite symptoms that you know will come to an end. And many times, they're not laughable, because they're not bearable.
I don't really have a good solution for this one, other than the fact that after 11 years with lupus, I can't think of a single instance where a lupus symptom hasn't at least subsided. Yes, some take longer than others to pass, and others don't ever go away completely, but they do get better, and they do become bearable. And believe it or not, they do become laughable. My swollen lips (from random angioedema), my inconvenient naps, my hair loss, my achy swollen digits, and even my recently acquired Raynaud's fingers...they've all become a source of laughter for me and my family at one time or another. And it's those light-hearted moments that have helped me muddle through the most frustrating of symptoms.
So here's to finding a few laughable moments in your life with lupus, just to make the time pass while you wait for those dog-gone symptoms to subside.
I'll tell you a little bit more about the weekend in an upcoming post, but I want to first tell you about the day before I left...which was last Thursday. Johnny was away for the evening, I was trying to get a million things done before I left, and the girls were in rare form. It was a beautiful day, so they'd been playing outside with the neighbor kids for hours. And as is often the case, the transition from playing outside to eating dinner inside was a tough one, so there was much kicking and screaming. (Okay, so no actual kicking OR screaming...but lots of tears.) But in the midst of Deirdre crying, complaining and being irrational about leaving her friends, and Bernie crying and whining in an attempt to imitate her sister, I found myself smiling. Because in less than 24 hours, it was all going to be over. I would be on a plane to a spa, and the crying and carrying on wouldn't be heard for miles.
I found it fascinating that all I needed to keep a chin up that night was the fact that there was a definitive end to the chaos. Simply knowing that the rigamarole wouldn't and couldn't go on forever made it completely bearable. In fact, it almost became laughable.
And that's one thing that doesn't come naturally with lupus - finite symptoms that you know will come to an end. And many times, they're not laughable, because they're not bearable.
I don't really have a good solution for this one, other than the fact that after 11 years with lupus, I can't think of a single instance where a lupus symptom hasn't at least subsided. Yes, some take longer than others to pass, and others don't ever go away completely, but they do get better, and they do become bearable. And believe it or not, they do become laughable. My swollen lips (from random angioedema), my inconvenient naps, my hair loss, my achy swollen digits, and even my recently acquired Raynaud's fingers...they've all become a source of laughter for me and my family at one time or another. And it's those light-hearted moments that have helped me muddle through the most frustrating of symptoms.
So here's to finding a few laughable moments in your life with lupus, just to make the time pass while you wait for those dog-gone symptoms to subside.
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