When I broke my arm in March 2016, I had to go buy another winter jacket. My cast wouldn’t fit through the sleeves of any of my winter coats, nor any of the ones that my friends offered to lend me. In Montréal a winter jacket isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity.
Our winter temperatures can last until mid-April, with daytime temperatures often as low as -40C/-40F (yes, -40° in both Celsius and Fahrenheit!).
Because it was the end of the season, there wasn’t much choice left in the stores. Added to that, it was excruciatingly painful – for my hand and arm – to try on different jackets. So I bought the first one that would fit over my cast.
As a bonus, the inside of the sleeve was made of a super-soft and satiny fabric. It was just about the only piece of clothing that didn’t cause pain when it touched the extremely swollen skin of my fingers.
The jacket is dark grey, a colour that I don’t particularly like. I had to buy a larger size than usual, for the sleeve to fit over my cast, so every time I put it on it looked as though I’d gained 20 pounds. But it kept me warm, and it was on sale, so I got it as a temporary jacket.
My plan was to donate it to charity – to a women’s shelter – once the cast came off my arm. The cast stayed on until the end of April, and by then it was springtime – so I didn’t need a winter jacket anymore. I put the grey jacket aside, to donate to a women’s shelter in the autumn.
But a wrench got thrown into that plan because my fracture had triggered a rare neuro-inflammatory disease; Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS, also called Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy or RSD). One of the symptoms of CRPS is allodynia, an extreme skin sensitivity. Even a regular fabric, rubbing against my skin, would cause excruciating pain.
So I ended up having to wear that oversized dark grey jacket again when the weather turned cold this fall. The super-soft and satiny fabric inside its sleeve meant that it didn’t trigger my CRPS-related pain sensitivity to fabrics.
The weather was much colder than it had been last March, and I soon noticed that cold air was getting into the jacket; probably because it was far too big for me.
I missed my regular winter parka. It’s made by a Montréal company called Kanuk, and is designed for our cold, snowy, and windy winters. There’s even a piece of fabric sewn inside, a parka-skirt at the waist, that you can snap shut to block any cold air from entering from the bottom of the jacket.
My Kanuk parka’s sleeves have extra-long cuffs that hug the wrists, also to keep the cold air out. When I saw the weather forecast for this week, with daytime high windchill (or RealFeel) temperatures of -30C/-22F, I realized that I’d be too cold with that grey jacket.
So I decided to MacGyver* my Kanuk parka. I’d need to get rid of the cuff inside the right sleeve, but it would look odd if the left remained. First I tried to use a seam-ripper (a sewing tool) to unpick the stitching of the cuff, but couldn’t manage to do that.
The finger joints in my CRPS-affected right (dominant) hand are too stiff to grasp the seam-ripper, and my left hand lacks the skill. So I resorted to using a pair of sewing scissors on the parka.
I was lucky! Each of the 10 cm/4″ cuffs was sewn into an extra flap of satiny fabric, with only the soft fabric attached to the inside of the sleeve. I could cut through that flap of fabric, without (otherwise) damaging the inside of the sleeve.
Now I can once again wear my super-warm winter parka, which is great news – because our forecast is for a bitterly cold winter this year. And that grey jacket? I’ll finally be able to donate it to a charity, so it will keep someone else warm; someone it fits properly!
Have a lovely day, and stay warm ‘-)
References:
* 2018 Oxford University Press. Oxford Dictionary: MacGyver. Origin: 1990s; “from Angus MacGyver, the lead character in the television series MacGyver (1985–1992), who often made or repaired objects in an improvised way”. Web: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/macgyver
* Kelly, Jon. How ‘MacGyver’ became a verb. British Broadcasting Company (BBC). 27 Aug 2015. Web: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34075407