The Plight of My Wedding Dresses Part Three - supporting my wife with her hidradenitis suppurativa
Updated: May 2, 2023
Learning to navigate the world of chronic illness while also planning a wedding? Yeah, it's a lot.
Strong. Resilient. Independent. She’s certainly not wrong that those 3 words do spring to mind when I think of Yasmeen. I’ve seen everything she has to go through and the work she has to put in to keep #HS under control and live the life she wants to live. Boy howdy, it is no small feat.
I must say I’ve married myself to one amazingly strong woman.
As I’m sure those of you who have planned a wedding know it can become quite a stressful and all-consuming endeavor. An endless sea of planning, vendors, decisions, and stress. That is of course even when things are going pretty much to plan. Now here comes #hidradenitissuppurativa ready to throw a big ole wrench in the works.
I’ve had to learn a lot about living and dealing with a chronic illness over the last few years. It’s an entirely new world I’m having to learn to navigate, and I can confidently say I do not always do so masterfully.
So while I may not always know exactly the things to do or questions to ask when dealing with HS, the one thing I know I can do is try and bring a relentless sense of positivity. I sometimes like to think of myself as a human Xanax. Whenever HS likes to pop up and be an angry little SOB, it can be very stressful. While there is precious little I can do with HS (she’s got one hell of a network for that), I do what I can to try and take on other things so that Yasmeen can focus on the important task at hand. Healing.
When dealing with bouts of HS, flexibility is key. It doesn’t care about your schedule or what you have planned. Our schedules frequently end up planned around treatments and the things we need to do to keep HS at bay as much as possible. Even when planning around it, things are constantly shifting. That’s all well and good most of the time, but throw in a wedding? That battle between the wedding timeline and HS was a relentless one.
Wedding attire for us gents is so simple. I could’ve run out a couple of weeks before the wedding to grab a suit and been good to go. But wedding dresses for you ladies? That’s a whoooole process. It’s no small task just finding the right one, let alone all of the fittings and adjustments that follow. So what to do when you’ve found your perfect dress but your HS and your body have decided not to play along?
Early in the year, our first course of action was just to stay positive. We’ve got plenty of time so we’ll deal with HS and then get her back into that dress she loves. As time started to slip away though and the struggle continued, I could see the doubt start to weigh on Yasmeen. Each fitting was a stressful adventure, and as the wedding kept getting closer the stress kept getting ratcheted up another level. Not just with the dress, but with all the fun that comes with the run-up to the wedding. What do we do about the dress had become a regular topic of conversation, and eventually, it was time to make a call. My inner accountant certainly didn’t want to buy a second wedding dress, but when it comes down to it there’s one thing that trumps all others. And that is her happiness.
From start to finish - the new dress, the second dress we'd already decided on, and the dress that ended up never going down the aisle.
I wanted Yasmeen to be able to enjoy every minute of our wedding. I wanted her to have everything she had envisioned and worked so hard for. We weren’t going to let a dress and HS screw with that. So with the wedding looming, we began our wedding dress speed run, and as you’ve all seen, it ended with her looking stunning in a new dress. The part many of you didn’t see was just how much weight figuratively and physically was lifted off her shoulders when we stopped trying to fight what was shaping up to be a square peg in a round hole. HS doesn’t care for what you want or what you have planned, and sometimes you just have to go where it takes you and not let it stop you.
