Living with Scleroderma

Reflections on the Messy Complexity of Chronicity

how to stay warm

Refreshment Break

· · 2 Comments

I made myself take a walk Monday afternoon. It was short, just around the block, but I got outside. It feels like fall, now, damp, chilly, and I need to get acclimated to the change in seasons. I’m back in sweaters and warm pants and thick socks, my long coat, hat. I wore mittens over the weekend.

It’s all too easy to make excuses to myself to stay inside when the weather turns. It’s too overcast. It might rain. It looks dreary. I don’t want my fingers and face to get numb.

So my short walk was a good reality check, as well as a much needed breath of fresh air. Even as it was overcast and had been pouring earlier in the day, the rain held off. The air smelled sweet with the tang of humus. My joints limbered up. My mind brightened from a jolt of oxygenated blood.

It was also good to see the neighborhood beyond my computer screen. Trees are turning late this season in Massachusetts, due to a warmer-than-normal summer and early fall. Usually we’re at peak foliage right around Columbus Day weekend, but this year green still predominates. Only the sugar maples, so far, have begun to flame and shed their leaves.

Pumpkins, plastic tombstones, skeletons and fake cobwebs decorate a few neighbor’s lawns, but the Halloween craze of a few years back seems to have ebbed. That’s fine with me. More than ghosts and goblins, there are quite a few red, white and blue signs promoting political candidates for the upcoming November election. That’s fine with me, too.

A new neighbor’s house has been repainted; that neighbor’s repairs are complete; another’s is in progress, with boards hammered over the front door. Al decorated our front steps with mums, pumpkins, gourds and cornstalks over the weekend, and I’m pleased with the result as I walk up our drive.

Back inside, I realize my fingers and lips have gone slightly numb. But it’s warm in the house, and I feel refreshed. Worth repeating.

Evelyn Herwitz blogs weekly about living fully with chronic disease, the inside of baseballs, turtles and frogs, J.S. Bach, the meaning of life and whatever else she happens to be thinking about at livingwithscleroderma.com. Please view Privacy Policy here.

Interlopers

· · Leave a Comment

Mid-July, and it’s hot in Central Massachusetts. High ’90s last week, and so humid that it felt as if you were swimming, far-too-far from the beach. What a relief when thunderstorms passed through on Friday to clear the air for the weekend.

Friends have asked me if I’m enjoying the heat. They well-know my aversion to cold. But, I tell them, even I have my limits. My happy place is mid-80s with low humidity and a light breeze. So it felt very good to take a walk around the neighborhood Monday afternoon, in precisely those weather conditions.

Only a few other people were outside—a kid on a bicycle, a lawn crew, a boy shooting baskets in his driveway. Just me and the birds and the gypsy moths. The latter seem to be reveling in their last week of life, flitting around tree trunks, plastering bark with tan egg masses that will become next year’s scourge of very hungry caterpillars.

Our city’s trees have been hard-hit, especially oaks. If we get enough rain this season, we may avoid more defoliation next summer. The caterpillars’ only natural control is a fungus that has died off in recent years, due to drought. It’s making a slow comeback, and this year’s infestation is not as bad as last, but conditions have been too dry for Mother Nature to hold the insects fully in check.

As a little kid, I used to do my part. I loved to collect caterpillars and let them crawl all over my fingers (at least until whatever they secreted made my skin peel). Then I would put them in glass jars along with twigs and leaves, poke holes in the metal cap, and imagine they were my pets. They would inevitably die of suffocation.

Walking on Monday afternoon, I wondered how something so beautiful could be so destructive. There’s a marvelous felicity about these moths, how their papery wings glow golden in the sunlight. They brush your skin like a dainty feather. When they first hatched from their pupae last week, fluttering outside my office window, I mistook them for butterflies.

Well, butterflies they are not, and I am hard-pressed to understand what possible positive role they fill in the ecosystem. Same goes for mosquitos. Ditto for rare and chronic diseases, plant-borne and human.

Regardless, nature’s balance deserves—no, demands—our respect. Our lives depend on it. On Tuesday, the temperature creeps back up near 90. I hope we get some rain.

Evelyn Herwitz blogs weekly about living fully with chronic disease, the inside of baseballs, turtles and frogs, J.S. Bach, the meaning of life and whatever else she happens to be thinking about at livingwithscleroderma.com. Please view Privacy Policy here.

How’re Y’all Doin’?

· · 2 Comments

Punxsutawney Phil may have seen his shadow last week, predicting six more weeks of winter (of course, technically, there are always about six more weeks of winter after Ground Hog Day). But Al and I took a break from freezing cold at home and headed south Wednesday night, landing in New Orleans for a long weekend. On Thursday, we were walking around without coats. Even when the weather dipped into the mid-50s, it was still welcome, compared to Massachusetts.

I’d been imagining this trip for several years as I worked on the first draft of my novel. Now that I’m starting revisions, I need to know more about my protagonist, who immigrates from France to New Orleans as a child in the 1870s. So the plan was to mix research and fun, to escape winter’s frigid clutches and celebrate my healed hands. And celebrate, we did.

NOLA is known for its incredible cuisine and did not disappoint. The jazz was great, the art provocative, the neighborhoods intriguing. Most people we met were welcoming and went out of their way to be helpful. Strangers looked us in the eyes and greeted us with a friendly “How’re y’all doin’?” as they passed us by. We caught Mardi Gras beads flung from parade floats (celebrations fill the month leading up to Fat Tuesday), noodled around stores and art galleries, walked and walked and walked. Our Lyft drivers told us about life in their home town and their experiences during and recovering from Katrina. On Sunday morning before we left, we strolled along the banks of the mighty Mississippi in Crescent Park and watched a sky blue freighter steam slowly past.

My research included an immersion in selected materials at the Historic New Orleans Collection, a walk through the Hebrew Rest Cemetery, a look at the city’s oldest hospital, rambles through the Garden District and Faubourg Marigny neighborhood to photograph the many and varied styles of housing. I thought about light and heat and immigrants and masks.

Saturday evening, we discovered a vintage costume shop, filled with bling. As Al shopped for the loudest tie he could find for Purim (a Jewish holiday with its own carnival vibe), I scanned the racks and discovered a beautiful beaded overblouse. I tried it on. Lovely. But when would I ever wear it? I left it on the rack, and we went to dinner across the street.

Good as the meal was—outstanding Middle Eastern food—I wondered. Why not? If the store was still open when we finished, I said to Al, I’d like to go back. As we walked up to the door, the owner and her clerks were about to lock up. But she welcomed me inside. “You need to make your own festivities,” she said as she wrapped the overblouse in white tissue paper and placed it in a purple plastic bag.

Even with the freezing temperatures here, I’m glad to be home. We packed a week’s worth of touring into three-and-a-half days, I was fighting a cold, and I’m tired. But it was well worth every minute. My hands held up. No infections. Many sights and ideas to mull. Make your own festivities, indeed.

Evelyn Herwitz blogs weekly about living fully with chronic disease, the inside of baseballs, turtles and frogs, J.S. Bach, the meaning of life and whatever else she happens to be thinking about at livingwithscleroderma.com.

Ain’t That a Groove

· · Leave a Comment

lywwpmswdog-hoang-duy-le

Our three Hanukkah candles have burned down for the night. As I write, a pot of lentil soup is simmering on the stove, and James Brown is singing Ain’t That a Groove on our local public radio station.

Do you love me, yes I love you
Do you love me baby, yes I love you

Six days ago, once again, we in the Northern Hemisphere passed through the longest night of the year. Fat, fluffy squirrels chase each other up and down our maple tree. They seem quite hardy, despite the fact that I took down the bird feeder a couple of weeks ago with intent to rig it so they couldn’t keep stealing bird seed by the pawful. Awful. Poor birds. I need to take care of it, as the temperatures drop.

Do you love me, yes I love you, do you
I just gotta, gotta know

Last week I read an analysis of climate patterns that explained how unusually high temperatures in the Arctic are forcing the Jet Stream farther south, trapping colder air over Siberia and sending it our way. We’re in for a bitter winter here in New England. But Al and I are traveling south for New Year’s, escaping chilly air and fog-iced roads for a long, warm, relaxing weekend and a friend’s son’s wedding. Not long enough for all my digital ulcers to heal, but a welcome pause before diving into January.

Hey, ain’t that a groove
Ain’t that a groove let me count

2016 was such a tough year for our nation and the world. I approach 2017 with doubt and trepidation. But then I remind myself: yes, the days are growing longer, once again, minute by minute. It is the way of the Earth turning on its axis. As we travel inexorably along our parabolic path round the Sun, I want to believe that the long arc of progress toward the greater good will prevail. In any case, the radio host just announced that 2016 was the first year that vinyl record purchases outstripped digital downloads. I’m going to assume that’s not fake news.

One for the money, two for the show
Ain’t that a groove now here we go

May 2017 be a year to remember for all the best reasons. See you in two weeks.

Evelyn Herwitz blogs weekly about living fully with chronic disease, the inside of baseballs, turtles and frogs, J.S. Bach, the meaning of life and whatever else she happens to be thinking about at livingwithscleroderma.com.

Image Credit: Hoàng Duy Lê

Season’s Greetings

· · Leave a Comment

IMG_0491 3Punxsutawney Phil is a liar. The prognosticating ground hog promised a short winter when he failed to see his shadow back in February.

Well, it’s the first week of April, and it snowed here Sunday and Monday. Today’s low is in the teens. My Pilates class was canceled last night because the roads were a mess.

Saturday afternoon when I took my walk, I was marveling at the green lawns, the daffodils and hyacinths in bloom, budding leaves. All that is blanketed in white, now. And even though I know the snow will melt in a few days and be forgotten soon enough, I’m just sick and tired of winter weather.

I’m tired of wearing layers of sweaters.

I’m tired of mittens.

I’m tired of leg warmers.

I’m tired of wool hats, chap stick and full-length down coats.

I’m tired of my hands turning blue and my digital ulcers smarting if I don’t pile on all that stuff.

Yup, I’m more than ready for consistently warm weather. (Hear that, Phil? The key concept is consistent.) We’ve had some crazy fluctuations lately, from balmy teases to frigid temps, sometimes within a period of hours.

I know, I know. It’s New England. “Wait a minute and the weather will change,” and all that. April here is finicky. I still have snow tires on my Prius (thank goodness).

But, come on. It’s enough already. You’ve had your turn, Old Man Winter. Give spring a chance. Is it really too much to ask for enough warm afternoons to unfurl leaves and unleash the smell of freshly turned soil? Do you have to freeze the tulips before they’ve flowered?

I’m not the only one asking. After such a long, dark season of too much political angst and bad news, we could all use a boost.

Evelyn Herwitz blogs weekly about living fully with chronic disease, the inside of baseballs, turtles and frogs, J.S. Bach, the meaning of life and whatever else she happens to be thinking about at livingwithscleroderma.com.