I had just had a major win as defined by the following criteria: 1) I did not take Ibuprofen or Tylenol in a 24 hour period, and 2) I did a sorta normal amount of activity— 6500 steps through the park, took care of my daughter, visited my parents for two hours and talked about “touchy subjects,” watched a movie with L (specifically “To Leslie” with Oscar Nom Andrea Riseborough). As my friend S with Long Covid of primarily heart symptoms once asked me: Are you in the phase of still of needing to lie down throughout the day? This was a day, when I could answer, albeit tentatively, no.

The next day, I awoke with gnawing in my right temple and a tender sub-occipital, a reminder that I had pushed the energy envelop. My mitochondria, Russian mobsters, demanding pittances in the form of rest. That is how this process works. So slow you have to lean over to a loved one and repeat the details of the day, and ask aloud that was a win, right?

My battle with what I call Long Covid pain, has its milestones, but the Shakespearean question that cannot be avoided for all woman makes its presence known: are my head and uterus on the same journey, can their fates be reconciled? The uterus is a primitive lair, it does not care at all about the wins of the ephemeral mind. It simply sounds the alarm, in my case, every 35 days that I’m running out of time to get better. I can take as much Advil as I need for my cramps, but the reproductive condition is cured only by complete cessation, abdication, severance, its coupons finally irredeemable, and thus its potentiality, gone.

At my grandmother lay in the hospital, indeed the day she died, our doctor friend who was visiting us, an oncologist by profession, reviewed my blood work and said that I should forget all these treatments and get pregnant to reset my immune system. While well-intentioned, it felt very much like a punch in the gut to hear it in that setting. What a big gamble especially at the expense of my living baby! And yet I mourn. I mourn this baby who is not happening for me. Everything else that I love and have had to pause, I hope, I pray, can be reasoned with, or by sheer will, overcome, or by gift of experience, caught up—-but when the uterus cramps, it’s simply telling you, “no deal.”

Just before he pandemic, just before I got pregnant at (was it?) 36, a fertility specialist who cracked jokes to L while exploring between my legs, tried to convince me to get my eggs frozen. He said, If you were my daughter, that’s what I would tell you to do. He predicted it would be much harder to repeat the process at 39. Then, I got pregnant naturally. As it was also the start of the pandemic, I felt so fortunate that I was driving out to Montauk to quarantine for the rest of my first and second trimester. When I gave birth, I was on work calls just 12 hours before my daughter appeared into the world, and then again, not 12 hours later. I told my business partner: this is actually pretty easy. But here we are, 39, and things are a bit harder for me. I’m paying these pittances to the mitochondrial thugs that live up high and down low. In my dreams, I’m scattered, spread thin across the many things I want to accomplish.

Is this all embarrassing? An overshare? Maybe. After all I didn’t even post a picture of my pregnancy on Instagram. Or a picture of my wedding. At the time I was afraid it was too personal. But what do I care of sharing these secrets now?

I received a poem from a friend the other day who is having similar hardships. We touch base with one another to share information and support. The poem is one of a beautiful conversation between her and I over the years. In this other world, the world where I don’t get sick, I never get that poem. I never share these things with others, I don’t quite understand the plight of mothers, of women, even though I am both.

Here is where I find harmony between my mind and body: we only have a matter of decades here, only so many Sundays together. For now, I will dream of new ideas when the mood is right. When the mood is bad, I will go for a walk. When the mood is very, very bad, I will give myself kisses on my hands, and say, I love you as I was instructed to do in a book. What else can I do? When my soul yearns, I will write. When my soul hurts, I will read. To be productive, I will go to a functional neurologist to learn the practices for rewiring my brain and share it with the Healingverse. I will bio-hack even if it can be scary at times, in an effort to heal. That’s the plan for now. I will continue my journey down the healing road, dropping green pills of Advil I don’t use on those fortunate days I don’t need them as much, and perhaps an unborn Hansel will pick them up and find me.