Last night I tried on the dress I’d planned to wear to a wedding today, and got quite a surprise. It was a few dress sizes too big for me! I knew that I’d managed to lose some weight, after packing on close to 40 lbs (18 kg) since being diagnosed with a rare autoimmune and neuro-inflammatory disease.
My local community hospital had tried a cocktail of different medications to try to get the disease under control, in 2016, to stop it from spreading. Thankfully they were able to contain it to my right arm, but with an unwanted pufferfish effect. I gained a whole lot of weight very quickly, but it stayed there even after I stopped taking those medications. Sigh…
It was truly disheartening to have to shop for clothes two or three sizes larger than usual, while at the same time feeling the horrid effects of the disease – and the all medications. Bone-crushing fatigue and nausea, along with excruciating pain and swelling in my right hand and arm. Which, of course, is my dominant hand. Murphy’s Law, right?
Back to the dress. What was I going to do? I had some other dresses I could possibly wear to the wedding, but they were all in linen and I’d wanted something more formal. And I absolutely LOVE this dress, with its large green chrysanthemum flowers and matching bolero-style jacket.
I bought it a few years ago, for special occasions; primarily weddings and fundraising events. None of the folks attending today’s wedding would have seen the dress, so it was perfect! I’d fallen in love with it in a store window, then almost walked out of the shop when I’d seen the price tag. Until one of the employees pointed out to me that there was a one-day half-price sale ‘-)
You have to realize something about me; I abhor shopping for myself. Detest, loathe, are there any words stronger than that? I adore buying gifts, for family and friends. Buying clothes for myself? Not interested. It was even worse when I suddenly had to buy clothes in a much larger size that what I’d been wearing for years.
So this dress – it was kind of special to me. It remains the only piece of clothing, which I bought in that larger size, that I loved. Just looking at it makes me smile.
Don’t get me wrong, I was thrilled to have lost weight! I’ve been trying very hard to lose what I call my “disease weight”, doing a lot of cycling and trying to stick to a mostly anti-inflammatory approach to food. That approach to eating is something I designed for myself, after being diagnosed with CRPS. Complex Regional Pain Syndrome.
My focus is on plant-based and whole foods, prepared at home without any added nitrites, sulfites, or other preservatives. Supplemented with at least one piece of grilled game meat, chicken, or fish per week; heavy on the fish!
Back to the wedding… The easiest thing to do would have been to wear one of my linen dresses. So ask yourself: Have you ever known me to do something the easy way? Didn’t think so.
Instead of taking the reasonable approach, I decided to try to alter the dress, the morning of the wedding. To take it in.
Prior to developing CRPS in my right hand and arm, I’d have taken in the dress the way a seamstress would. My mom and beloved grandma were both seamstresses, so I’d learned from the best!. I even have two different sewing machines at home, for different types of projects.
The proper way to take in the dress would have been to rip out (unstitch) all the side seams of the dress and its lining. Then I’d have put the dress onto my dressmaker’s dummy, inside out. I’d have pinned all the seams, to adjust the dress to my new size, then cut away any excess fabric.
Finally, I’d have sewn all the newly-pinned side seams, being careful not to run over the pins with my sewing machine. How was I going to do all this, without being able to use my right hand? And with only two hours to get it done?
This seemed to be a good opportunity to look for shortcuts. Was there any way that I could reduce the size of this dress by more than two full dress sizes, rapidly?
If you consider yourself to be good at sewing, stop reading now. Otherwise you’ll be horrified by what I did to my dress! I wasn’t able to use my seam-ripping tool properly with my left hand; I would have damaged the fabric if I’d kept trying. Instead I very carefully scissor-cut the two main side seams apart. Only the dress, not the lining.
There were already a few loose pleats, just below the waist of the dress. I’d decided to add two more, much larger pleats, over each hip. I needed to take in about 5 cm (2”) off each side of the dress; a total of just over 10 cm (5”). I had a plan.
When I took the dress off the dressmaker’s dummy, to try it on, the pleats didn’t fall the way I’d planned. I did the unthinkable, to a seamstress. I pinned the pleats, with my left hand, while I was wearing the dress. Then I sewed two lines of stitching, parallel to where the original side seam had been. From the outside of the dress.
When my husband left for a bike ride this morning, he had no idea what I’d planned. He’d have wanted to stick around, in case I needed help lifting the sewing machine(s) onto my work area – our kitchen counter ‘-)
I’d just finished this massacre of my dress when I heard him open the door to our garage. I slipped on the dress, and went to meet him. His eyes lit up when he saw me in this dress, although that might just have been because he knows I love it so much.
I showed him what I’d done to the poor dress, putting the seams along the outside of the dress, and asked whether it was still okay to wear. “It’s better than okay sweetheart, you look beautiful.” And that was that. My dress went from a size 16 to a size 10, and with any luck I’ll have to take it down a size 8 at some point – if I can lose the rest of my disease weight.
Oh, and the wedding? It was a beautiful ceremony, an extremely happy couple. The groom is my physiotherapist; he’s been treating me for CRPS for so long, and so often, that we’ve become friends. One of his first dates, with his now-wife, was coming to my milestone birthday party at a local microbrewery that had just opened ‘-)
I even suggested the activity that marked their first month of dating; zip-lining in the mountains north of Montreal. They loved it! He showed me all the different engagement rings he was looking at, talked through his ideas with me for a surprise proposal.
Then all the wedding plans; I even got to gift him the funny socks he wore for his wedding. There were bright yellow rubber ducks on his socks, because he always kept a rubber ducky in his treatment area; something completely unbreakable for his child patients to play with.
It was deeply moving to see their wedding, after having had a front-row seat to the groom’s side of their relationship from its start. For the first few years we would do one-hour treatments, three times a week. We chatted quite a bit, in those three hours each week!
And now, it’s time for me to hit the hay. As always, thanks for reading and feel free to reach out to me via Instagram or Twitter. I’ve sadly had to disable the comments section of the blog, because of repeated hack-attacks – apparently in Chinese and Russian. Who’d want to hack a bioethics and CRPS blog, though, is a mystery!
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