Hope 2

I ignored, or rather, I was distracted at the time of my one-year anniversary of Long COVID (start: November 2023). It was a long and hard year where I spent an immense amount of energy focused on interpreting, diagnosis, and understanding my health on a daily basis. I have learned much about the body, the functioning/malfunctioning of different organs, and the deeply intertwined nature of organs and functions within the body. Despite my increasing knowledge, I still struggle to follow a realist’s outlook, the middle ground between the emotional pathways of the optimist and the pessimist.

Following my exploratory endometriosis surgery in October 2024, contrary to all expectations given that there was no endometriosis for them to remove, I felt better than I felt almost all year. My Long COVID symptoms nearly disappeared for at least the first 5 days. Although my body was healing from surgery, it was a minimally disruptive healing especially compared to my 2017 appendectomy. OTC medicines hid the pain; I ate with gusto; and within days, I walked around the block and then 2 blocks. For comparison, two weeks after my appendectomy, I still struggled to shuffle to the corner and back.

Feeling so good shocked me. My range of what I thought were realistic expectations for my post-surgery experience did not go that far on the positive end of the spectrum. It confused me. I also mistrusted it. Yet, each day that it continued, hope grew.

Then, my Long COVID symptoms started returning and I started tumbling down the steep slope of the disappointed optimist.

My rockstar nutritionist halted my emotional decent. He interpreted my body’s reaction to surgery as a sign that my abdominal pain throughout Long COVID is caused by tense and inflamed intestines, which means the anti-inflammatories and anesthesia from the surgery calmed my gut down enough that it could function properly for the first time this year. He started me on a trial-and-error journey of supplements to find the right combination that will replicate the positive effects of the surgery drugs.

Phase 1 went really well, reversing the returning Long COVID symptoms.

Phase 2 backfired. While it gave us the data we needed to identify the appropriate Phase 3 (going well so far), the physical reversal caused by Phase 2 was depressing. During Phase 1, I became hopeful/convinced that we had solved my gut problems and that I would not again have a Long COVID reversal caused by my guts. So when, Phase 2 triggered and worsened my Long COVID heart problems (high pulse and high blood pressure), fatigue, and brain fog, I fell into a post-optimistic pit of despair.

While I have since regained some of the ground lost during Phase 2, I remain dispirited. I am still so tired that looking forward, I cannot imagine any day soon having the levels of energy and motivation that I had in the month following surgery.

I am now back to taking it one day at at time. The optimist in me hopes each day when I wake up that this is the day I’ll be motivated and have energy again, and cries a little bit each day this isn’t true. The pessimist in me assumes that I won’t be energized and motivated again before the end of the year. The realist in me guesses that the reality will probably be somewhere between those two: I’ll continue to have an assortment of bad and good days, and, despite the day-to-day and weekly variability, the trend line is still improving.

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Feature image credit: hope by Creative Mahira from Noun Project (CC BY 3.0)