I originally just started this article by delving right into the “Dear Santa” part, but then as I started formatting it, I realized it deserved an intro that was worthy of one of my articles.  By now you all know “me” as a writer.  My theory…”go big or go home”.  So, “go big” I definitely did.  This is a long one, but please stick with me and I promise it will be worth it.  Even if you’re not a Spoonie, I’ve included parts that anyone can relate to, so grab a cup of coffee (go ahead and add that splash of Bailey’s….I won’t tell) and sit down for my Christmas wish (i.e. last ditch effort, bribing plea bargain) to Santa Claus.  Whatever your belief is, may your holiday this year be pain free and you are able to remember where you hid your kid’s Christmas presents. 🙂

Dear Santa,

Let me start off this letter by saying that I’ve been a good girl this year. Well…I’ve mostly been a good girl this year, cause you really can’t count that time that I cut that guy off in rush hour traffic and gave him my special one-finger wave. I mean, really…he was driving a baby blue El Camino and was sporting a rat tail that crawled straight out of 1982. You cannot argue against the point that he totally had that coming. And while we’re on the subject of things I may or may not have allegedly not been so “good” at this year, you also you honestly can’t tell me you are going to hold me responsible for grabbing my shoe off my foot and playing a spontaneous game of “Whack-a-mole” to anyone standing around me who uttered those 5 words that make me lose all my demure Southern charm …. “But You Don’t Look Sick”.

Now, in all fairness, there are a few things that I will admit to doing that are less than becoming of someone who is writing a letter to Santa Claus, trying to snag some of that swag that you have on the back of your ride that’s pulled by twelve blinged out elk with a hemi strapped to their butts.

MY BAD: I recently had the pleasure of an extended stay in that home away from home, you know, that 5 star deluxe hotel that provides its guests with elegant accommodations of a 3×5 box with a window, bed with hand rails that comes with its own intravenous medicinal stand. The deluxe amenities included a toilet with emergency call string and complimentary pee measuring cup. 24 hour room service included a sleeping pill at bedtime and then being shaken awake every 4 hours there after for vital signs. Now while we’re on the subject of room service, let us discuss the dining options. My options were plenty: I had the option of broth or pureed baby food. Now, I know I’m not the best patient in the world, and I know it comes as a surprise to you all, but I can be slightly snarky when I want to be. Apparently when I filled out my dining application for the evening’s festivities, I chose poorly. I smelled it coming down the hallway even before it arrived and my stomach began yelling at me from inside my body, “Do it and die, sister.” The cart rolled through my hospital room door and as the tray lids were lifted I saw something that I could only explain as a plate where a baby puked on one side, and a dog squatted and let loose on the other. I won’t repeat what my exact words to the poor food service worker were on here, but suffice to say the tray left as quickly as it entered my room.

MY REDEMPTION: Later in my stay at the Tropical Sands Medical Center Resort and Spa, I apologized to said food service worker and we became best buddies. He even started bringing me the “good” chocolate pudding and hiding it for me in the special 4th floor freezer.

MY BAD: It was Thanksgiving and of course I waited until the last minute to get everything I needed to make dinner for 10 people. I know what you are all thinking in your heads right now… “But Steph…you don’t cook! You have a hard time even microwaving some Easy Mac without blowing up the entire kitchen!” Well to all of you negative nellies, I say….ok, you’re totally right. But, there I was, pushing that cart up and down those aisle like a maniac, throwing pie crusts, canned pumpkins, bag of potatoes, eggs….I had no idea what I was buying but the recipe was on the back of the box, and I figured someone in the house knew how to follow a recipe. I had almost reached the promised land (i.e.…the checkout line) when I remembered I had forgotten the most important part of the meal……..the wine! I peeled that grocery cart around like a NASCAR driver doing donuts right after taking the checkered flag and headed towards the wine aisle. One bottle….two bottles. Ten people for dinner and I’m cooking? I grabbed four more and peeled out again towards the checkout line. As I reached the register, of course, the lines were backed out so far that I could see myself ringing in the New Year in the cereal aisle before it was my turn to check out. Letting out an annoyed grunt, just loud enough to let everyone around me know how irritated I was, I took my place and waited. It wasn’t until I reached the conveyor belt and started unloading my items that I realized I was in the 12 items and under Express line. I knew better than to do it, but my eyes shifted backward towards the mile long line behind me….each and every one of them with an obvious 12 items or under in their carts and looks on their faces like given a chance and no surveillance cameras for court evidence, they would steam roll me over with their carts until I was super market road kill. I quickly paid for my items and hauled ass out of the store.

MY REDEMPTION: The minute I stepped outside the grocery store, I heard the familiar ring of the Salvation Army bell ringer. It was an older lady wrapped in a scarf with a pleasant smile on her face. Reaching into my pocket, I dug what change I could find and came up with only a couple of quarters. I stopped for a moment and then reached back in for the five dollar bill I was saving for a drive thru stop at Sonic and shoved it in the Salvation Army container. She smiled at me, I smiled back. I felt really good about myself…..until she pointed out that my cart was rolling down the parking lot heading towards a Lexus SUV. I never knew I could run that fast in clogs.

MY BAD: This is an oldie but goodie and I know I’m not the only one that does this. Technology is advancing every day and one of the best parts of it is being able to take pictures of events with friends and then immediately uploading it to face book and sharing it with everyone. Unfortunately it is rarely the picture where EVERY one in the picture looks spectacular. Whether the person is looking away from the camera, has a hair out of place, is making a weird face, or is just having an unfortunate wardrobe malfunction, it is still uploaded. Now…here’s the thing. As long as I look normal in the picture, I’m uploading it and tagging away. Sure, I feel bad that I just tagged “Sue” in a picture where she was dancing on a table with a cowboy hat on her head and her heels on her hands, responding to a dare to see if she, indeed, was still as “bendy“ as she was in high school, , but hey….I looked good in it, so it must grace the walls of my page!

MY REDEMPTION: All I have to say here, people is there are two things I learned from this experience. 1) People can untag themselves from your picture just as easily as you tagged them in it, and then most importantly 2) paybacks suck. The phrase “you reap what you sew” comes to mind with this section of redemption. Since I’ve done this, I can’t tell you how many unflattering, unattractive, almost on the verge of illegal pictures I have been tagged in. And trust, me, if we weren’t thirty-something adults, I’m sure the caption on the tag would read something like “Paybacks are a bitch, sister. That green feather boa and baseball hat is truly fashion forward..”

MY BAD: Ok, so I have never professed to be Betty Crocker. I’m not one of those apron-clad moms that twirl around the house with a dust feather, perfect hair and have a perfect dinner on the table waiting for everyone when they walk in the door. Screw that. Whoever that woman is, I say we tie her down, shoot her full of some steroids and watch as she transforms from Betty Crocker into some Linda Blair replica from the Exorcist. I’m an autoimmune plagued working mom. I don’t do lavish meals. Ok, if we’re really being honest here, I don’t even do microwave meals. I’m so tired when I get home from a 10 hour work day, I’m lucky to even open a bag of chips. So yes, I am guilty on nights when my husband was away on business and I had just come home from “one of those days” at the office, of doing the unthinkable. Oh, I tried the step above unthinkable,…peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but there was no bread to be found in the house. Then I thought…cereal! Cereal is nutritious, it says so right on the box! Damn….no milk either. As I scanned the cabinet, I saw it. My eyes glanced over it once, twice…and on the third time they came to rest over it and stayed. Spray Cheez-Whiz in a can! Then, I looked to my left….corn chips. I insisted I could rationalize this. Sure, spray cheese was processed, but it was cheese nonetheless, right? So it has to be covered somewhere in that food pyramidy thing. Corn chips…corn, that’s a vegetable, right? Dairy and vegetable, perfect meal! I grabbed three plates, dumped some Fritos over them, squirted some Cheez Whiz over the top like I was auditioning to be on the Food Network’s next season of Cupcake Wars, and served them my creation….Nacho Surprise. After a few seconds the oldest teenage girl child asked me what the surprise was. I told her she would find out after the meal was over. After cleaning her plate, she showed me the empty paper plate (Dixie plates, cause that’s how we roll in this house) and asked about the surprise. I looked at her for a minute and replied, “The surprise is that you get to clean the kitchen. Good job.”

MY REDEMPTION: I gotta be honest here, Santa, there really hasn’t been a redemption. Since I’ve been on medical leave, I’ve been good and tried to cook home cooked meals here and there, but let’s face it….I’ve just never been blessed with the culinary gene of greatness. I consider myself accomplished if I get the Hot Pocket out of the sleeve without having the insides pop out. Maybe not cooking is my redemption. Can we let this one slide?

There may be a few minor uh-oh’s here and there, but let’s be real, Santa, when you weigh all I’ve had to deal with this year in big crappy health issues one after the other after the other, I think I should get a “pass” . In the grand scheme of this thing we call life, I’ve examined the scales myself and from what I can see, my good deeds have outweighed my not-so-good ones by a mile. Let’s look at my community service record alone. I serve on the Lupus Walk Steering Committee every year, my team is consistently the top fundraising team and I am constantly switching charity work hats to chauffeur hats as I cart the boy child to t-ball, the middle girl child to travel ball and the oldest girl child to forensics debates. I sat through what seemed like a three hour production of 20 four year olds dressed in pilgrim outfits doing the “Chicken Dance”, only half of them blanked out on the moves and either started crying, staring blankly into the audience as if aliens had vaporized their brains from above or started running laps around the stage making what I can only assume to be noises chickens would make if they were being chased by the Chick-fil-A cows.

And if THAT isn’t enough, I voluntarily took the two older girl children to see Taylor Swift in concert. By myself. A Swift concert. Just me and the girl children. Did I mention that it was a Taylor Swift concert? Let me be a little clearer…..Taylor Swift. *insert Newman-like voice from Seinfeld* This is my nemesis. The Dr. Evil to my Austin Powers, the Lord Voldemort to my Harry Potter, the Mr. Crabs to my Sponge Bob….well, ok, that last one may have been a little over the top, but you get my point…

Now that we’ve gotten THAT out of the way, let’s get to the real reason for this letter. Everyone keeps telling me that you’re not “real”. I even stopped believing for a long time after I found all my presents sometime in 3rd or 4th grade hidden in my mom’s closet. Mom wasn’t the most inconspicuous covert operation leader in the world, if you get my drift. Anyway for years and years, I didn’t believe. In all honestly there was no reason for me to believe. I knew the truth…all adults knew the truth. You didn’t exist. Parents were the true Santa and the idea of a round man in a red suit and a jolly smile was just a farce used to entertain children. To be honest, the more I thought about it, the idea of Santa was even a little disturbing. A strange man, pulling B&E’s while you’re sleeping, eating your food and doing who knows what else in your house while you’re asleep? Isn’t that usually cause for a 911 call and a plea of self defense in a court of law?

Anyway, I digress…

This year I had a thought….what if? What if you actually DID exist? What if you existed, only we had it all wrong…it wasn’t to bring presents. It was to bring feelings, changes and differences in our lives. The thought had me up all night thinking. Oh, alright….it was the damn steroids that had me up all night scrubbing the bathroom floors with an old toothbrush, but for this letter, let’s say it was you. It made me think that maybe it wasn’t too late to make my Christmas list. So here it is. Please do not count off points for spelling, grammar and punctuation…it is way past narc-o-clock and my typing skills aren’t up to par at this particular time. Well…that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. That being said…..here we go…

1. Hair– I’m not talking about the kind that is hanging in the pretty package on the Beauty Supply store’s walls. I already have those. Yep…got me one helluva weave that makes me look like I walked straight outta Hollywood. But this is not the hair I want. Please bring me back the hair that went down the shower drain in clumps….that were found on my pillow the next morning like some jacked up present from a drunk tooth fairy…that when I was in the hospital were in pigtails and when I took the pigtails out…..I LITERALLY took the pigtails out. In my hands. Chunks of hair. Fake hair is pretty. Fake hair is nice. But it’s fake. Please bring me MY hair back. Oh….and if it’s not too much trouble, could you kinda just leave all those gray parts of it in the bag? I’d just tweeze those damn things out anyway.

2. One Doctor – Don’t get me wrong…I’m thankful for all the doctors I have that help me deal with the five billion ailments and illnesses that seem to seek me out to wreak havoc. However if you could create some kind of “Super Doctor” that specializes in everything and is literally an expert in everything I need: Rheumatology, Cardiology, Pulmonology, Gastroenterology, Endocrinology, Gynecology and Nephrology, and leave HER under my tree, that would be super great. I need a one stop shop. This driving all over creation to see this ‘ologist, then that ‘ologist, but then this ‘ologist has no idea what ‘that ‘ologist is doing because this ‘ologist has his head stuck up his own ass, but then again, that ‘ologist can’t get the results to this ‘ologist because this ‘ologist is on a two week vacay to Cabo. ONE. STOP. SHOP. Please and thank you. ‘Kay, thanks, bye.

3. Shots that don’t shoot liquid fire up your butt – I think this one is pretty self explanatory. During my bought with my super fun throat infection for 4 months, I couldn’t swallow a pill….a stupid little tiny pill. So guess who had to get shot in the ass with steroids every 7 days? Look, I’m no wimp when it comes to needles. Please. I’ve had 3 babies, all c-sections, Lupus for 11 years, countless IV and surgeries, multiple infusions, extended portable intravenous lines, porta cath surgery…yadda yadda yadda…you name it. Point of the story is a little sticky sticky with something sharp doesn’t phase me. What DOES phase me however is what is inside that shot. I would like to meet the doctor that created the liquid version of that particular steroid and beat him over the head with my infusion pole until he loses consciousness. This shot is liquid fire. I kid you not. LIQUID. FIRE. Once it hits, it feels as if someone has just lit a blowtorch to your pants and then sprayed some Aqua Net beside it just to amp up the show. Santa, please, please, please, for the love of all that is good and right, take whatever synthetic habanera pepper that is in that shot out and let’s save the tushies in 2012.

4. Open a jar – Again, this sounds simple to normal people, but not to us Spoonies. I couldn’t tell you the last time I was able to open a jar by myself. How nice it would be to just take one out of the cabinet, turn the top and….POP, it opened. Ohhh, but nooooo, that can’t happen that easily. Nope. Our fingers don’t work that way. Our hands cramp up, they don’t have the strength to grip the can. On any given night, you will see me with a jar of spaghetti sauce (making my famous pizzas for the kids….spaghetti sauce on toasted Wonder Bread with cheese….mmmmm. Told ya I was the Betty Crocker Anti-Christ.) twisting and turning, sitting on the floor, grabbing it between my feet as I try to twist it again. Nothing. I bang it on the counter. Nothing. I try to pry it open with a fork. Nothing. After at least half an hour of this, my FOUR year old (yes, take note here…I said FOUR) comes over and just turns the top and……POP. It opens. Please Santa…..please bring me the ability to turn a jar and not look like a total tool in front of my son. OR, even better, you could just send me a winning lottery ticket so we could eat out every night of the week and I wouldn’t have to worry about turning jars. Yeah…that would probably work better. Lottery ticket. Definitely lottery ticket.

5. Memory – I can’t remember what the hell I was going to write about in this paragraph.

See, Santa? It’s really not that much to ask. I’m a bad girl by nature but I try my hardest to make up for it with good deeds here and there. I’m just your average mom, living with four existing autoimmune disorders, recently diagnosed with one more. I work Monday through Friday, I do well enough to get the entire house fed, dressed and off to their respective places of higher learning, then hope that I am fully dressed and actually remembered to put makeup on BOTH eyes this time. (Don’t ask…that seriously happened to me one day. I prefer not to talk about the details, as my therapist and I are still working through the trauma). I do my job well enough to collect my paycheck and remain employed. During a lovely hour commute home, I enjoy lovely and peaceful scenery of cow pastures, chicken slaughter plants and a couple gas station blocks that I assume has been designated the assigned hooker control headquarters. Once I am home the rest of the night I play referee, goalie and umpire to the game of “let’s see who can make mommy pop a Valium the fastest” which is happening upstairs.

It’s the season of giving and if you see fit to bring me these things I have asked for and lay them underneath the tree for me to find on Christmas morning, you will have made one medically disastrous year end on a good note. The new year is just around the corner and that means that everyone gets a second chance at everything…the slate is wiped clean and we begin again. For those of us dealing with chronic illnesses, it is a time to renew our hope and faith that the year ahead will bring forth a cure for the diseases that plague us.

So in the spirit of the season and good will towards all, and stuff, I suppose that means that we can keep the unfortunate “accidentally dropping my phone in the toilet incident” between us, right? I mean really….the contract was almost up….and it just…happen to be in my back pocket and…oppps, it fell in and…well…..what can I say, everyone had a Droid except for me!

Ohhh wait….is it too late to add an iPhone to my list?

Love and Holiday Wishes (remember we’re the house with the rigged up satellite dish on top of the roof…be careful, don’t want to end up with a Rudolph-ka-bob.  We ARE in the south you know.),

Steph

Article written by senior editor, Stephanie Kennedy

Stephanie lives in Fayetteville, NC and is the mother of 3 always hyperactive and occasionally adorable children. She was diagnosed with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus in 2001 and in the time since has added Scleroderma, Hashimotos, Celiac, Degenerative Disc Disease and most recently, Addison’s Disease. In her day-to-day life she is a Community Relations Specialist (aka, marketing and creative hodgepodge facilitator) and a part-time blogging snarkzilla. She can always be found somewhere in social media-land causing some sort of trouble. Find her on twitter at @steph_in_nc or on facebook at Stephanie Welborn Kennedy.