Dear Unsealed,
Dear Surgeons and my Primary Doctor,
April 2022 marked a turning point in my life. My battle with COVID in January 2021 wasn’t just a fleeting illness—it lingered, wreaking havoc on my body long after the virus itself had passed.
One night, in unbearable pain, my roommate dropped me off at the ER at Riverside Community Hospital. The pain in my abdomen and throughout my body was excruciating, yet they left me suffering in the lobby. Struggling to breathe, I finally convinced them to let me lie down.
When a nurse finally took me back, I underwent countless invasive X-rays, each one adding to my discomfort. The results were alarming. My stomach was dangerously close to my heart, and my gallbladder was so infected that it had become gangrenous, leaking green bile into my abdomen. The doctor told me, in no uncertain terms, that without surgery, I would not survive.
The weekend passed in a blur as I lay in a hospital bed, hooked up to IVs, receiving hydration and antibiotics. Early Monday morning, they wheeled into a surgery that was a procedure that lasted for hours. When I awoke in my shared hospital room, a kind (and very handsome) nurse gently turned me, and through my pain, I joked, “You can turn me anytime.” The dude was alright!
Recovery was brutal. The pain was beyond anything I had ever experienced, a 25 on a scale of 1 to 10. I spent over a week in the hospital, and when the surgeon recommended rehab, I initially resisted. But once I realized how difficult even the smallest movements had become, I knew I needed help.
Before this, I had never undergone major surgery, save for two cesareans in the ‘80s and a broken finger surgery back in 1964. This experience changed my life completely. COVID was not just an illness, it was a cruel bacterial infection that ravaged my body.
When I finally returned home, I had new challenges. My body was weak, and the pain was relentless. I relied on a walker to move around, and even minor tasks, like preparing my liquid diet, felt monumental.
Before COVID, I walked eight miles a week. Now, walking to the mailbox and back feels like an achievement. The transformation was something I never could have prepared for. My diet had to change entirely. Gluten and lactose were my new norm, and worst of all, I had to say goodbye to red meat. No more In-N-Out burgers. It took two years of trial and error to figure out what I could eat without getting sick. Every grocery trip was a painstaking process, reading labels to avoid hours of misery.
Everything about my life from 2021 to now is unrecognizable. We, as human beings, are not invincible. Life is not just lollipops and ice cream. We are not gods. My lifestyle flipped 180 degrees because of circumstances I never saw coming.
In 2023, at the urging of my therapist, I returned to writing. It was a way to reclaim my mind, even when my body felt foreign to me. Adjusting to my new limitations was hard and accepting financial instability was even harder, but I push forward, even when the odds seem stacked against me.
I miss my long walks, my metro rides across Southern California. Losing them hurts my pride, my dignity, my sense of self. But life does not promise us roses without thorns, nor roads without pebbles.
And despite it all, I carry on.

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