How can the sun and I co-exist? This is a serious question and dilemma for me this past 25 years and for future years to come.
I cannot ever imagine myself walking in the dark for many reasons: the primary being safety, and then the issue of falling due to not seeing well. Since I have very expensive hardware inside my body (prostheses), falling poses a very dangerous medical complication that I would rather not take the chance. Yet no matter how early I start walking in the morning, the sun greets me with vim and rigor every time. My lupus skin does not approve.
My dermatologist found 2 small lesions on my face and of course, I was admonished. My son joked with me about getting me a Burqa!! I started asking around but wearing a Burqa might subject myself to another set of possible unpleasantries.
A funny bone tickled me. I thought of the ski masks that bank robbers use in the movies and started wondering where I could get a hold of one--not going to rob a bank, promise.
Last week I thought all the cyclists I run into during my walks and how their faces are always covered underneath their helmets. Then I thought about costumes like Spiderman and Batman. I walked into Sports Authority and asked to see face masks and face hoodies. I was directed to the cycling section. There they were----so many different types: from a skull to Spiderman!! There were at least 30 different prints and several types of fabric. I chose a plain light fleece fuchsia hoodie that covers the head, the neck, and the entire face with a slit opening for eyes. There were only 2 colors, black and fuchsia. I thought the black one looked ominous so I chose the latter.
With proper medical creams and ointments the facial lesions are abating and my face is all but covered during my walks. In the summer, there are tube-like spandex headbands that can cover my face from the cheeks down and a wide-brimmed visor would cover the forehead and eyes.
This is beginning to be a boring blog even for me to write. The point about this story is not so much the process of finding proper cover for my skin and my face. This blog is about the mere fact that I can't even co-exist with the early morning sun for even a couple of hours without fearing for my life. So many of us take so many things for granted.
When I was a little girl my mother made sure I was in the morning sun everyday for at least half an hour. She was adamant about vitamin D and sunshine. Now I take vitamin D in a pill and cover my entire body when I greet the sun. What an irony!
Each time I lose a normality due to lupus, I grieve just a bit. Over the years I have learned to grieve less and less. Nonetheless, grief is real and painful. I have learned to use humor to redirect my thought patterns. I have coined a funny name for each of the medications I take and I call my fake hips "hardware". However, underneath all that "jazz", I am too painfully aware of the limits lupus has placed on my life and on the quality of my life.
Walking in my hoodie is both warm, and cool:)! I am the only one! People look at me, stare at me, and a couple of Muslims guys did a double take (wrong color for Burqa). Yet I am rest assured that the sun and I are friends again and we can most certainly co-exist.
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