This text was written as I learn to live with Long Covid and attempt to regain my creativity. All the posts and some more info can be found here.
CW: in this post I mention blood (menstruation) and menstruation pain.
This week I bleed. After swallowing three tablets of the pill, back to back as per doctors' orders, I stop. I have been spotting for over a month but it was not much but a mild annoyance. This, all this blood that pours out of me, violently red, is different. It is the blood of headaches and heavy legs, painful cramps in my uterus and unsteadiness. It is the blood of forgetfulness that makes me pack my teaware but not my tea. It is the blood of fatigue that makes me use English words with a French grammar. My body grinds to a halt.
I had forgotten. I forget so easily the pain, the discomfort, the unrelenting nature of this cyclical repetition, seemingly endless. Yet it is barely pain this time, a mere echo of what it used to be. My legs are heavy but they are not hot and pulsing with ache. My uterus cramps but it does not steal my breath and bend me in half. I keep rationalising my pain. 'Oh this is okay. It used to be so much worse.' It is still painful. It is still debilitating when the tendrils that press at my skulls blur my vision. I cannot even eat in the evening, too daunted by the simple task of chewing.
Hours before bedtime, my body curls under the cover. Something in me wants to shiver but I have no strength left for this. I am paralysed by pain and fatigue.
The first uterus cramp and legs twinge come after a swim. I had not been at the lake for over two weeks. I wasn't sure it was wise to go but I wanted to remember the water before my brain normalised not going. I did not bring my thermal boots and gloves. Instead I wore the sandals that pushed the pedals all the way through Portugal almost ten years ago, the sandals that dipped in the cold water of the ocean around Gigha, around Mull a year ago. They were pink once, not the colour I'd have chosen but they were free so I didn't argue. Now they are tarnished, the colour of dust and long hours in the sun. Sections are starting to peel but they still fit, just about, so I still wear them.
The water is cool. I expected it to be a little warmer than this. I still need to gradually spread water over my body before I plunge into the lake and trust it not to swallow me. My skin does not tingle and after a minute or so I forget about the temperature. I am comfortable. My legs cramp up then but only mildly in a reminder of the damage they can do to me. This is okay. I only need to kick, slowly, slowly, slowly to keep my heart rate as stable as can be.
I go to the red buoy, loop the squat yellow buoys, and float. I grab hold of my toe float, large, puffy, yellow stained black from my bicycle rack. Those stains no longer grow. I watch the sky, the distant trees, the hoard of families on paddle boards. I hear the boys scream as they retreat from the bouncy castle on water to the café for cakes and sugary drinks. The cormorant isn't here and neither is the heron. I don't think I'll see them again until late autumn when everything quietens again.
Later, when I am dry and wrapped in the shawl I purchased on Mull a year to the day, I feel the first uterus cramp. 'Ah... yes. Of course,' I mutter under my breath.
The GP surgery calls me. I see the name of the practice pop up on my screen and for a moment I hesitate to answer. I have requested to leave them for another practice and I am not sure I have anything left to say to them. I pick up.
'We have been notified you are registered at another practice. You have an appointment tomorrow we are going to cancel.'
'Sure, go ahead.'
I let the appointment disappear into the ether of their computer system. I need to make a new one with the new practice, one that will hopefully listen when I say I am in pain. This appointment is complicated and I do not know how to formulate it. It is to do with the havoc my hormones wreak in me, with the fatigue of long covid and its interaction with my hormones.
I roll the sentences over in my head, how to explain to this new practice to interplay of long covid, PCOS, and possible endometriosis that no GP or hospital doctor seem willing to investigate, how I need them to think of all those things separately but also together at once. How I do not want the pill or hormonal coil but an actual solution. How I do not want to hear the word 'contraception' one more time when the pill is nothing else but a pain killer, a silencer of my body that defers pain and build its own set of problems for further down the line.
I sigh.
I know I am asking for something that does not exist and yet, after decades of asking, I persist. A small stubborn part of me remembers the first gynaecologist I ever saw, the only one that ever listened, the only one that was willing to work with my body, not make it stop. Maybe... just maybe there is another doctor like this out there. I just need to keep asking.