Belatedly Giving Thanks

Thanksgiving is not a traditional celebration for us, and I love it all the more because of that. As I write this, the turkey is in the oven, the homemade cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie are chilling in the fridge, and the NFL is on Sky Sports. It's the wrong day, but it is a typical, Allen Thanksgiving.

Matthew and I moved to the US just after we got married, and spent the first few Thanksgivings invited into the homes of dear, American friends. Those were lovely, but we felt like alien interlopers. Strange, British onlookers to a very American tradition. Many people would think of the Fourth of July as the classic American holiday, but, to me, Thanksgiving is more so. Of course, some of the over-simplified narratives of pilgrims and natives sharing the bounty of the land gloss over the colonisation, introduction of disease and genocide that underlie America's complicated history, and I am glad that those are being discussed and unpacked a bit more. But that is precisely why Thanksgiving is so emblematic of America to me, since it incorporates all of the best and the worst of its history in one glorious tradition of food-packed over-indulgence and togetherness.

After those first few Thanksgivings in other people's homes, Matthew and I had a few alone, not really celebrating, but just spending the day together like a Saturday without anywhere to go. I imagine that our experience of Thanksgiving in those years was a little like Christmas must feel in a christian country for non-christians - all those Santas and pine trees, but none of the meaning. It felt a little lonely to know that all around us, people were gathering with their nearest and dearest, eating turkey and pumpkin pie, and recharging all the old family tensions over who was making Granny's traditional stuffing, and who never pulled their weight when it came to the washing up.

At some point, after Sam was born, though, we decided that we should celebrate Thanksgiving for our American son. We had no family obligations or traditions, though, so we could pick and choose whatever menu items we wanted, and just spend the day at home, together in our own, little Allen family world. Slowly, but surely, especially once the boys started school, our favourites started to become traditions, although still without any sense of obligation. Matthew and I enthusiastically embraced the turkey and pecan pie, although we added roast potatoes, and skipped the candied yams. The boys started to request pumpkin pie as they got older, even though our British palates could never quite reconcile a vegetable in a dessert. The commentary for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade and Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show became the background noise while I cooked, and the endless NFL football games on TV provided the backdrop to the post-prandial tryptophan coma. Over the years we even started to invite British relatives over for Thanksgiving, or became hosts to other non-American outsiders who had nowhere else to go.

I don't think that it was until we moved back to the UK, though, that we really started to treasure and actively embrace our Allen family Thanksgiving traditions. Being back in England meant that celebrating Thanksgiving required more effort and planning, and took on a kind of sentimental attachment. The logistics and timings were more difficult - it really isn't practical to cook and eat a huge Thanksgiving meal on a workday, and sourcing some of the ingredients were more challenging. Just like when we lived in the US and had to import mincemeat and Christmas puddings, and make our own British Christmas treats, I now had to source tinned pumpkin and French's Fried Onions to make our favourite Thanksgiving recipes. Whereas I used to just order store-made pies, I learned to make a decent homemade pumpkin and pecan pie... even if they aren't as pretty! And we have continued to welcome people into our celebration - American friends who are feeling homesick for their family traditions, and our British family and friends who are new to it all. When I looked back through my photos to find a picture of previous gatherings, I realised that I did not have any because I am usually too busy cooking.

This year, the challenge has been further complicated by COVID, and, of course, we cannot welcome others into our home. Even Sam, who is only 8 miles away, in his college house at Girton, cannot come home this weekend, due to the national lockdown. So I asked the boys what they wanted to do. Did they want to wait until Sam does come home next week, at the end of term? Or, celebrate without him? Or, just skip Thanksgiving this year? I wasn't surprised that the latter was not seriously considered as an option, but I was a little surprised that Jack insisted that Sam had to be part of our celebrations. 

"It's not Thanksgiving without Sam," he said. "Even you and Dad are not as important as having him here, since you are not American. Sam and I are American, and so I want to celebrate Thanksgiving with him."

A little taken aback by Jack's willingness to throw the cook under the bus, I was also touched that he felt this bond with his brother. So, we are implementing a new tactic this year, which, hopefully, won't become a tradition...! Instead of Sam coming home for Thanksgiving dinner, we are taking dinner to him. I have started all my timings earlier than usual, to allow time to pack up a plate of food, and half a pumpkin pie, which Matthew will then deliver to Sam's door. Once Matthew is back home again, we will set up the laptop at the Allen Thanksgiving table, and FaceTime Sam into the family gathering. It's not perfect, and may even be a bit silly, but it's an Allen thing.

One of the things that I have come to realise about Thanksgiving is that having rituals and traditions are important to really honour the gratitude fully. Of course, if you asked me, I would feel grateful for my family and friends, and all the abundance of food and drink we are lucky to have every day of the year. But it is through making the effort to create a ritual of the meal and the togetherness that the gratitude becomes more meaningful. And that is even more important this year. So, as I head off to check on the turkey, I would like to say Happy Thanksgiving, to all our family, friends, colleagues and aquaintances, whether near or far, American or not. I am grateful for you all.

Sore Fingers and Self-Doubt

We have a sofa being delivered today. Ordered three months ago, to the day, it is much anticipated by human and canine members of the family. It will replace the old sofa and armchair that we shlepped from the US with us 6 years ago, which are literally falling apart. Nonetheless, my feelings about the new arrival are more ambivalent. 

I know that the new sofa will be more comfortable, and will definitely smarten up the look of our tiny, cottage living room, but... I am worried. Not just about whether it will fit in the spot we have designated for it, but how we will rearrange the other furniture around it, and the logistics of disposing of the old sofa and armchair. 

You might consider that a mundane problem, maybe even a good problem to have... 'oh, the poor thing... she has to worry about how to fit her nice, new sofa into her lovely little cottage when others don't even have a home to live in.' You would be right, of course, and I remind myself of this as I sit here, worrying. But I still don't know how we will manage it, and the delivery is due in about 3 hours.

I have a new layer and perspective on this worry, that would not have been present before this year... I know that I will struggle to physically be able to move much furniture around. I also know that whatever energy I expend on moving furniture will likely leave me depleted for any and all other tasks that I need to get done today. Like making the pumpkin pie that I promised our American boys for our belated Thanksgiving celebration tomorrow. Like making dinner tonight. Like being able to move at all when I get out of bed tomorrow morning.

The nasty voices in my head want to dismiss these worries with a constant stream of snarky cynicism. They berate me with how I am just making excuses, that I am lazy, and that I should just get on with it, and get myself moving. And that I should also finish that novel I have been meaning to write, redecorate the rest of the house, and broker world peace in my spare time while I am at it(!). The nasty voices in my head have always been hard taskmasters. But recently, their cruelty has become more pointed, and harder to bear, as their criticism of my inability to get out of bed most mornings has come to sound more reasonable. Why can't I get up? Why are my back and feet always so sore? Why do I keep dropping things from my sore, swollen fingers, especially first thing in the morning when my hands are usually numb? How is it possible that I can sleep until noon, without even changing position in bed, and then be still tired for the rest of the day? Or when I do get up and start my day, something as simple as taking the dogs for a walk can leave me exhausted and aching for days afterwards? I don't recognise my body, and feel a sense of alienation with it. I feel imprisoned by it's limitations, and angry with myself for not being able to shake it off.

The nasty voices don't like to let me complain to other people much, but eventually I did talk to my doctor about this. In fact, in looking back over my medical records, I first talked to a doctor about my sore, swollen fingers about 18 months ago. Just early osteoarthritis, he said. Wear and tear in an aging body.

Then I saw a doctor earlier this year, when I had debilitating fatigue for days after going for a run. "You're pushing yourself too hard," he said. "Just back off a bit, and take it slower. You're not as young as you used to be."

So I stopped running. Then, I started to notice that even a long walk left me worn out for days. Then, I started to have days when I could barely manage to get the dogs outside at all without collapsing into a heap for hours afterwards. 

I saw doctors about my recurring plantar fasciitis (foot pain from inflamed fascia) years ago, when I was running a lot more. Despite all their suggestions, it seemed to come and go with no correlation to the orthotics, painkillers, different shoes and lifestyle adjustments. For the last year, it has come back much more persistently and painfully, to the point where I could barely walk first thing in the morning, and would be in tears at the end of the day. I had stopped mentioning it to doctors, since nothing they had ever told me about it seemed to help.

Then, I noticed a few patches of red, raised skin plaques. I didn't think much of it... they weren't really bothering me. Just a bit of an eyesore. But between COVID and my other physical limitations, it's not like I had much of a social life and so my appearance was not high on my list of concerns. Eventually, they started to itch a bit and would not clear up, so I called the doctor again. The receptionist made me wait to talk to the GP in the practice who had an interest in dermatology, and she asked me to send her pictures of the lesions, due to COVID-related social distancing. She only works two days a week, and so she did not get back to me right away. But when she did, she said, 'it's psoriasis.' She sounded surprised that I did not know this. 

"Have you not had psoriasis before?" She asked.

"No."

"What about family? Has anyone else in your family got psoriasis?"

"No." I racked my brain for any mysterious skin lesions mentioned by family members.

"It usually runs in families," the doctor assured me, as if I must be mistaken. Then she said something that changed everything. "And it can be associated with psoriatic arthritis. Do you have any joint pain?"

"Well, my fingers have been very sore recently..." I said, cautiously, not wanting to whine too much. "But the worst pain I've been having is due to my plantar fasciitis, which is obviously not joint-related."

"Actually, plantar fasciitis can be a sign of psoriatic arthritis," she said, casually.

After we'd spoken, I went to Dr. Google. There were lots of images of severely swollen, sausage-like fingers and toes, and extensive, angry red skin lesions all over anonymised bodies. That couldn't be right... nothing I was experiencing was that bad. But then I found an account from a psoriatic arthritis (PsA) sufferer who had presented with unremitting plantar fasciitis before any other signs appeared. Apparently it was possible to have PsA before any psoriatic skin lesions were present, and, in some cases, the skin lesions never appeared.

Finally, I was referred to a rheumatologist. One of the advantages of where I live is that there is a high concentration of specialists and world experts associated with the university. My rheumatologist is no exception, and he specialises in PsA. After about 20 minutes discussing my history and physical symptoms, he confirmed that it was highly likely that I have PsA, and probably have had it mildly for years. There are no definitive tests, although part of his research is looking for blood markers. The best way to confirm a presumptive diagnosis is response to treatment, which I will begin next week.

The various general practitioners that I have seen over the years, while initially sympathetic, have had a tendency to be quite dismissive of my reported signs, especially once any bloodwork they ran was within normal limits. Depression and peri-menopause are the catch-all diagnoses for a woman of my age and presentation. I don't blame them for that. PsA is not well recognised or understood, even by medical professionals, and it is hard to diagnose in it's early stages. But I do feel frustrated at how easily my doctors and I colluded to convince me that there was nothing really wrong with me, despite what my body was telling me. I believed the depression diagnosis in particular, because being tired and painful does make you depressed, and because I believed I must be a little "crazy" to keep thinking that there was something wrong with me when medical science could not find anything. I don't think it is a coincidence that it was only once I had visible skin lesions that a doctor took my concerns more seriously, and was willing to dig a bit further. I also suspect it may not be a coincidence that that doctor, who looked back over my whole medical history in search of a holistic answer, was a woman.

That is not to say that I think the other GP's were consciously dismissing me because I am a woman, but I do believe that all of us, myself included, were less likely to take my signs seriously because I am a woman. Unconscious bias is powerful in all of us. And even now, as I feel the relief of validation for how I am feeling, I still struggle to give myself permission to rest when I am tired. So today, I am worrying about the new sofa, and how we will find a way to make space for it. And I am struggling to be kind to myself and admitting that getting the new sofa installed may mean that I won't be able to do much else later in the day. I am, like many of us, a work in progress. A work in progress with psoriatic arthritis.

Polar Bear in the Fens

 

Today, I shrugged off my early winter blues, pulled on a swim suit and drove out to a remote little village on the banks of the River Cam, downstream from Cambridge in the Fens. This spot is so remote, that the pub nearby is called The Five Miles From Anywhere. The scene that was greeting me was what the Scots would call driech -- foggy and damp. There was a certain, mystical beauty in the way that the river merged with the sky, in a blanket of condensation on a very short horizon. But nobody in their right mind would call it an inviting prospect for slipping in to the river for a swim. I took a picture as I waited for my friend, Catheryn to arrive. When she did, apologising for being late, like I had been, we commiserated about the lack of sunshine that had been forecast. 

"I wouldn't have come if we hadn't arranged to meet," she admitted. I agreed. It wasn't the first time that we had made this admission to each other in this very spot. 

We sighed, and then started stripping down to our swimsuits on the river bank. I was undressed first, and, not being willing to stand around in the damp long enough to think about what I was doing, I stepped off the grassy bank into the water. I took a few tentative steps, avoiding the big rock that I had stubbed my toe on once or twice before, but which was easily spotted in today's clear-glass, still surface, and then pushed out into the water. I puffed and panted a bit, and tried to convince myself and Catheryn that it really wasn't that bad, before deciding that it really was quite bad, and shut up to concentrate on forcing my arms and legs into a stilted breaststroke. 

After making my way about 40-50 meters into and along the middle of the water, I glanced back at the bank to see how Catheryn was doing. She was picking her way carefully down the slipway, into the water. With neoprene boots on, her feet were a little more protected from the slippery edges of the concrete tiles, so she could take a more gradual approach to the water than I had. But we both knew that whatever approach you use, at 3 degrees Celsius air temperature and about 8 degrees water temperature, on a murky November day in England, the cold shock of immersing yourself in a natural body of water was literally breathtaking. I trod water for a while, and then swam back towards Catheryn a little, waiting for her to catch up. Part of the reason for swimming with a friend, beyond the safety element, was to share the moment of shock and awe.

By the time Catheryn caught up with me, my skin was getting numb, and a delicious tingling feeling had taken over. I was breathing a little more naturally as well, and was able to appreciate the view of a serene swan gliding into the mist ahead. The surface of the water felt completely still. The joy was setting in.

"Okay?" I checked with Catheryn. 

"Yep. You?" she responded. When your breath is short, conversation can be terse. 

"Yep." 

I turned and we breaststroked further up the river, approaching the bend up ahead.

"Don't think I'm going to get to the tree today." Catheryn commented, referring to our usual turning point. Or, what had been our usual turning point in earlier months, when the water was a few degrees warmer.

"That's fine. Me neither," I reassured her.

As we made our way under the power lines, we chatted a bit more, our breath coming a little easier, although we both decided that we weren't in the mood for submerging our faces today. A sedate, heads-up breaststroke was better for conversation anyway.

"That's about 6 minutes," Catheryn pointed out, "better turn around."

"Okay," I agreed. 

As we are still acclimatising to the colder temperatures, we are careful to keep track of our time in the water. Catheryn tends to stick to about 10 minutes, I sometimes push it a minute or two longer. I have more of what wild swimmers jokingly refer to as "bioprene" than Catheryn, who is generally fitter and leaner than me. While some swimmers wear wetsuits, made of neoprene, Catheryn and I are relying on our natural, bodily insulation layers to keep us protected from the cold. Hence, biological "neoprene" or "bioprene".

After doing my first winter dips back in January, as a sort of New Year's challenge to myself, and then enjoying wild, outdoor swimming more and more over the summer and autumn, I signed up, in a moment of madness, to the Polar Bear Challenge this winter. Polar Bears commit to swimming in open water at least twice a month from November to March, at different levels, which correspond to different distances they have to complete. There is a Penguin level, which allows swimmers to wear any or all layers of neoprene or other synthetic layers that they want. But all of the other levels of Polar Bears commit to wearing nothing other than a standard swimsuit, and a latex swim cap. I am doing the Gold level of the challenge -- which means at least two swims a month of 250m or more, and a total of 5000m over the whole 5 months. The advice from MamaBear (Pauline Barker, a champion ice swimmer who sends out helpful and encouraging weekly missives) is to do more of your distance for Gold in November and December, as there is a lag in water cooling compared to air temperatures, so the really cold water temperatures do not happen until February or March.

At 2300m so far, after today's estimated swim distance (thanks to Google maps), I am on track for the Gold level so far, as long as I keep getting in the water. As someone who was pretty competitive about distances and times a long time ago in my youth, this is a very different kind of challenge. But since then I have had injuries and illnesses that have made it hard for me to recognise my own body, and it is a relief and a strange delight to challenge myself in a different way. Swimming 250m is barely a warm-up for most athletes, but most of those same athletes might think I am crazy for doing it in sub-10 degree water in nothing but my swimsuit. This challenge is less about athletic achievement for me, and more about my desire to move my body, and reconnect with the natural world. 

In the last year I have developed signs of a chronic disease, which has brought new experiences of chronic pain and fatigue. As well as being challenging physically, that has caused mental struggles as I have tried to figure out what that means about my self-identity and self-respect. Swimming gives me some freedom from the weight and pain, and the cold exerts a kind of magical analgesia on my pain, too. So, for now, I will be maintaining my transmogrification to Polar Bear, even if I still grumble on the riverbank before I get in.