Hi all! I recently got over COVID for the third time this year (or maybe fourth, what exactly is rebound COVID, anyway?).
After nearly three years of vaccines, boosters and feigned naive humble bragging I managed to meet 2023 never knowingly having COVID. That was no easy feat. I masked, social distanced and all that. But the immunotherapy I’m on for MS makes me prone to chest infections and weakens my ability to fight off viruses.
But it turns out COVID would be the least of my woes this year…
It’s been very difficult for me to talk about what’s been going on with me health-wise — not for lack of language but a mystification of how or where to even start. Because the body is in constant motion, as is energy. When could I say was the beginning of my body choosing betrayal? And when did I decide to call it “betrayal” instead of something kinder like “habitua” or “defensive”? My body, after all, came from other bodies. And so it goes.
I could go back 20 years to my second ever pelvic exam where I said I felt a lot of discomfort and the doctor chuckled loudly saying if you can have sex, you can deal with a speculum.
To which I said, somewhat embarrassingly (I’m not proud of that), I’m a virgin, I haven’t had sex yet (I would, a month or so later, thus the exam).
She scoffed and just continued on.
I could go back some 42 years to the night I was born or, rather, when I was trying to be born but struggling to get through my mother’s too small pelvis and running out of oxygen. Despite my mother’s repeated voicing of concern that something was wrong and her baby was in distress it still took five more hours before a doctor decided she was right and agreed on a (now emergency) caesarian.
Or, let’s go back 67 years to the segregated hospital in Washington, DC, where my grandparents were held in the ER entrance — where my grandmother was very much in labor — because my grandfather refused to answer their question “American or Colored” which was required for admittance.
I think you get the pattern? I hope so.
Because I’m going to describe to you what my terrible summer was about and why it was so terrible. And it involves a lot of waiting, a lot of debate, a lot of denial, a lot of shame, and a whole lot of blood….
You can read a lengthier version on Huffington Post here, and stay tuned for more winter tales of how my summer spent me.
Thank you always for showing up.
L