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The Holiday Gift No One Wants

Krissy Edmonds
3 min readDec 14, 2019

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No it’s not a fruitcake

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

Honestly I would take a fruitcake right now and eat the whole thing over this.

December used to be super fun for us, we would go to all the tree lightings, and all the city and town events. We would head to the theme parks. We would go caroling, and visit nursing homes. Basically we would drink in everything Christmas. The past few years things have changed though.

Now once December hits we do a few things, where there are lower crowds. We wear n95 masks to protect from germs. We basically stay in and watch movies and do our shopping online.

Bit has always had a not great immune system, but when she started getting recurrent pneumonia every winter we scaled back on our outings during cold and flu season. We have a simple goal of being home and not inpatient in the local children’s hospital for Christmas. So far we’re on track (though we’ve spent Easter, her birthday and countless other smaller holidays inpatient).

This year though, Bit got the gift no one wants for Christmas. It came last week, and is still hanging around. We have now been to the ER twice in a week and her hematologist once. Bit was diagnosed with Scarlet Fever, which is as old as that fruitcake you keep passing around your white elephant exchanges.

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Krissy Edmonds
Krissy Edmonds

Written by Krissy Edmonds

Nerd, Liberal, Writer, Mom of Chronically Ill kiddo in SoCal

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