A Very Spoonie Christmas

So here we are in December, I can’t believe this year has flown by so quickly. So as we gear up for the holidays I thought a Christmas decorating challenge would be in order. Usually I’m not a very Christmas-y person, but this year I tried to be a bit more festive than normal. So I’ve done a few new things this year since this is my first Christmas as a tubie.

• The first thing I’ve done that I’ve been excited for, for awhile it decoration my IV pole. I found some little fairy lights that were originally meant for decorating wreaths. These lights are perfect for decorating IV poles, though depending on the length of the lights and pole they might not  be long enough to wrap all the way to the top. The lights I bought were five feet long if unfurled completely but wrapped around my pole they cover a bit over half of it. They have longer strands of lights according to Meijers website, but they weren’t in stock so i just go these ones. And they have a few different settings, there’s colored, white, flashing from colored to white and a timer setting. I like the colored setting because it’s so cheery.

And to attach the battery pack for the lights to your pole, I’ve found that you can use                        Command Strips to secure it to one of the legs of your pole and it won’t fall off or anything. The other thing I used to decorate my pole is a little bow tree topper with twisty ties on the back of it. 

• I also have a little purple Christmas tree in my room. And if you know me, you know I love purple, glitter and Hello Kitty and that’s all my little tree is. I’m quite happy with it it only takes me a few minutes to decorate but it’s adorable and makes me happy. And if you can’t fit a tree somewhere but have a pretty bare section of wall you could use command strips and a string of lights to make a tree shape on the wall.

And lastly main project for this post! I take liquid Tigan via my feeding tube to help ward off nausea. I get a lot of it and I’m always getting rid of lots of vials, I thought instead of throwing them away that I would use them for something and then came up with the idea to turn them into Christmas (or just general) decorations.

To start I had to get the labels off, and you can’t peel them off normally because they use strong adhesive. I soaked the vials for about three and a half hours in warm water and after that they were really easy to peel off.

After that I got a few syringes, cups of water and food coloring. You should start with about four drops of food coloring in water for each color and test fill a vial and see if you like the way it looks. If not then suck the water back out, add two more drops of food coloring and repeat the process. It took quite a bit of trial and error, especially the red because originally it looked pink.

 

Once you fill all the vials, get a ball of yarn or some other thick string to tie the vials onto. My dad helped me with this part because I’m not very good with tying knots. I’m not entirely sure what this knot is called, I think it may be called a slip knot but don’t hold me to it. And I have pictures to help you tie the knots so here we go!

 

-Step one: Take the yarn and wrap it around your finger.

-Step two: push the end of the string you’re holding through the back of the yarn loop

-Step three: pull the yarn the rest of the way through and pull the loop tight

-Step four: put the vial through the loop and lighten it more to make sure it’s secure

So I challenge anyone reading this to decorate their medical supplies! Draw on your formula or TPN bags, dye your formula, decorate your IV pole and just be creative and have fun with it. Just because we’re sick doesn’t mean we can’t make things festive!

So sign up and download the completely free Health Storylines app here and use it to help you keep track of things you need to do. Or make some lists to remind yourself of things.

I’m also going to leave a list of things I used for these projects!

• Fairy Lights
• Small bow tree topper
• Command Strips
• Used Tigan vials (Or other small vial)
• A syringe for each food color
• A ball of yarn