PLEASE NOTE: This is a minimally-edited transcript that originates from a program that uses AI.
Anita Rao
This is Embodied, from PRX and WUNC. I’m Anita Rao.
When Philip Hoover and his wife Lauren Hill-Hoover tested positive for COVID-19, they thought they knew what to expect. But then Philip's symptoms persisted, morphed and intensified.
Lauren Hill-Hoover
It really pulled the rug out from under us and from under me. I remember feeling like I, I didn't know what to do to help him. Neither of us knew what was going on with his body.
Anita Rao
Today, we’ll talk about how an illness that’s affected tens of millions of Americans upended the life of one couple and forced them to confront big, existential questions — like could their marriage withstand this new reality?
Philip Hoover
I think that when this happens to you and you're in a relationship, it's really easy to project you're insecurities onto your partner. Just like this idea that like, you know, that I was less than, uh, because I wasn't the person that she had met.
Anita Rao
Learning about love in sickness and in health, just ahead on Embodied.
Two years into the pandemic, Philip Hoover and his wife Lauren Hill-Hoover, tested positive for COVID-19. They'd watched other folks go through it and buckled up for a similar ride, anticipating movie marathons and a few weeks on the couch. But more than 400 days later, their life was still completely upended by Philip's lingering symptoms. He had long COVID and it was wreaking havoc on his mental health.
Philip Hoover
I'd gotten to a point where I felt like I really had just sort of turned away from my marriage, turned away from everything.
Anita Rao
Chronic fatigue and energy crashes meant that Philip had to put a lot of his life on pause. Including a full-time screenwriting career and hobbies he and Lauren loved, like dining out and traveling.
Philip Hoover
I just lost so much of what I counted on and what I regarded as as my life. That losing Lauren next just in my mind, just seemed logical. It was like, you know, how could I ask Lauren to bear this burden?
Anita Rao
This question that Philip started to ask himself morphed into a conversation with his wife. Now that this illness has reshaped our life and reconfigured our relationship, how will we as a couple go on?
This is embodied our show about sex, relationships, and health. I'm Anita Rao. Philip Hoover is one of 18 million American adults who've been diagnosed with long COVID. An illness that encompasses more than 200 different symptoms and looks different body to body. It can affect everything from cognition and sleep to digestion and physical capacity.
For Philip and Lauren Long COVID forced them to confront questions in their thirties that many don't have to consider until much later in life. Like what does caring for each other in sickness and in health really mean? And how does acquiring a chronic illness change how we think about the future?
We're gonna get to all of that, but first, back to the beginning and how Philip started to get a sense that his recovery from COVID was looking very different from what he thought.
Philip Hoover
I had some just really weird symptoms that I couldn't really explain. I couldn't tolerate sunshine, and I just had this general feeling of malaise that wouldn't go away. And I realized that I had such severe brain fog that I couldn't actually understand any of the TV shows that we would watch. Pretty concerning, um, especially since my career was writing in in television. The worst part of it, I think was what it did to my nervous system. Like it just really demolished my ability to cope with anything. And I would just, you know, SOB for no reason. I remember I had auditory hallucinations, which are terrifying. And then one day I was just kind of so fed up of being sick and feeling so awful. I decided to exercise and that's when things got a lot worse. My health pretty much completely unraveled. Um, it was kind of like a, a bomb, just like went off and.
Anita Rao
I wanna hear more about that period, but I want to first hear from your point of view, Lauren, about the early phase. You were also recovering from COVID yourself, so what were you seeing that was kind of the differences between your recovery and what was happening with Phil?
Lauren Hill-Hoover
Yeah, as Phil mentioned, his symptoms continue to proliferate, so his eye. Was improving slowly but surely. He had just this completely bizarre buffet basically of symptoms ranging from, you know, not being able to go outside. He got this bizarre like red rash on his skin, like he was the color of a lobster. Anytime we would go out into the sun or other times, we would try to go out to the movies and it was, you know, like 65 degrees out, but he felt like it was 30 degrees. He had to be in a down coat, so he had all these ranging physical symptoms we had to keep. The blinds closed in our house because his eyes were so sensitive to light. Um, and I had a really hard time at the beginning to fully understand that this was all part of a network of this illness that Phil was suffering from. And that all of these things were interrelated. It really pulled the rug out from under us and from under me that when I, when I reflect back on that time on my own, I'm like, it was just crazy. It was so overwhelming. I remember feeling like I, I didn't know what to do to help him. Neither of us knew what was going on with his body, and I think one of the things that was particularly difficult, which I would imagine. Is common for other people who are experiencing long COVID and going through this both with partners but also family members was trying to disentangle the nervous system components, which were really manifesting as like mental health challenges with the physical health components.
Anita Rao
Hmm. So there was all of this happening as you're describing kind of a, a range of symptoms, a way that they were interacting with one another that were kind of exhibiting as like maybe some mental health symptoms, but also very much neurological symptoms. Phil, in your modern love essay about this time, you described the experience of seeking medical help as. Being high fived while drowning. That's such a, that's such an intense kind of image to paint. Tell me more about what you were experiencing trying to seek help and get an understanding of what was going on.
Philip Hoover
Yeah, so I'd always seen the medical system as something to revere and, and a place where. I would typically go to get answers, but it was pretty quickly apparent that really is just sort of like the Wild West for long COVID patients. Like no one really knew anything and it was disturbing to realize that, oh, we're actually having to educate our own doctors about this. People would pass you from one specialist to the next, and they would look at my health through the lens of their specialty, which was fairly limiting.
Anita Rao
So Lauren kind of painted this picture of, you know, blinds closed. You like really kind of struggling to be out in the world. What did this mean for your day-to-day life, your ability to work? How, how did that all go in, in the wake of, uh, some of these symptoms?
Philip Hoover
I guess one part of, uh, one I guess luck you could say, um, if we can use that word here, is that I got sick in between, um, shows. So typically in television, you work a season on a show and then you have a little bit of a break before the next season. So I was already on a natural break from work, but I, I just couldn't go back. I couldn't really even leave the house. Um. I remember just feeling very claustrophobic at the time, like my entire existence, uh, was confined to our little bungalow in East Hollywood where we were living at the time. I remember Lauren and I would, you know, we're trying to find things to do together and like we tried watching nature shows, which seemed like innocuous enough, right? Like we'll just watch some cute little nature show. But even just seeing like a lion, like Hunter Gazelle would just like shatter my nervous system. So it was almost like there was nothing we could. Really, really ing.
Anita Rao
So after many months of navigating Phil's long COVID symptoms, you all decided that you needed more support and you moved in with Phil's parents in Northern California. Lauren, when did you know that it was time to make that decision?
Lauren Hill-Hoover
It, it was really difficult to come to that conclusion. I initially had been really resistant to it 'cause I really was attached to my independence and having our own home. My business partner had just moved to la She actually was five minutes away from us, which was really critical for me during that time. Um, and she was actually a really big factor in helping me see that we were drowning in our life in Los Angeles. And that specifically, like I needed more support at home. Um, and I travel for work. I go to New York a few times a year to see clients. And so when we started having more days of Phil really struggling with suicidal ideation, and then when I started feeling really anxious about leaving him home alone, coming back from a, a work trip that I had that spring, I had this clarity that we couldn't stay in la. That it was totally unsustainable for us to continue our life that way. Um, Phil also was, you know, influential in making that decision. He had gone up to the Bay Area, um, to stay with his mom for a few weeks, and that was the trip that provided clarity for him that it would feel good and supportive for him to be in the Bay Area. So we kind of both had our own individual processing around what we needed at that time and agreed that this was what was gonna be best for us.
Anita Rao
You say like you were afraid to leave him home alone. Was that something that the two of you were talking about out loud? Were you on the same page about kind of the, the precarity of Phil's health?
Lauren Hill-Hoover
We were, um, thankfully we had already been in therapy together before. Phil developed long COVID, um, and we're both in therapy individually and in couples therapy together. And my therapist had, you know, I had spoken with him about like, how, how do I support someone who's experiencing suicidal ideation and really helped me with like the importance of. Asking direct questions, not shying away from it, not treating it as something that's like shameful or a stigma, but like really willing to be in that conversation with someone so that I could clearly identify like a, a real risk. Um, and it never progressed really beyond suicidal ideation, but as a partner, as someone who loves someone who's experiencing that, um, it is so distressing. Yeah, I was just incredibly distressed.
Anita Rao
Yeah. Phil, I wanna hear from your perspective how you felt like your long COVID symptoms were affecting your all's romantic partnership and, and your marriage. In this phase,
Philip Hoover
it, it felt like, sort of like just this Groundhogs day and you start asking yourself, is this ever going to end? And it just starts to really pick away at you mentally. I remember saying to Lauren, um. Or actually being unable to say to Lauren that things will be okay. And at that time, Lauren was really needing me to, she was really just wanting me to reassure her like, I need to know that we're gonna make it through this. And it's, it's almost like hard, hard to believe that I was unable to say that, but I think that just goes to show how unfathomable dealing with this is. Like I just literally couldn't say. Things are gonna be okay because it felt so disingenuous.
Anita Rao
Just ahead, we'll hear more from Philip about how this low point made him question the longevity of his marriage and what happened when he voiced those fears allowed to Lauren, all of that. After the break, you're listening to Embodied from North Carolina Public Radio, a broadcast service of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. You can also hear Embodied as a podcast. Follow and subscribe on your platform of choice. We'll be right back.
This is embodied. I am Anita Rao. We're talking today about how long COVID affects a marriage and shapes a couple's relationship to their bodies and one another. After more than a year of dealing with debilitating long COVID symptoms, Philip Hoover hit a breaking point. He was struggling with his mental health. He couldn't work full-time, and his brain and his body were unrecognizable from what they'd been before. He and his wife, Lauren Hill Hoover, had moved away from their home in LA to Northern California where they were living with his mom for help with caretaking and finances. In the seven years of their marriage, up to that point, he and Lauren had connected through a shared love of travel and culinary exploration with long COVID. Those things and so much more were no longer possible. And Philip wondered if he was becoming a burden to his wife. So we started a conversation.
Philip Hoover
It wasn't the first time, actually I'd said it a few times before, um, basically giving her, you know, an escape route. And saying, you know, you don't have to deal with this. It's up to you if you wanna leave.
Anita Rao
Lauren's reaction this time was calmer than usual, but firm.
Lauren Hill-Hoover
It was really frustrating to receive that from Phil. I knew intellectually that he was wanting to give me an out from a really difficult circumstance, and on my side it kind of felt like. I'm here, I'm committed to this. If I, if I weren't, I wouldn't be here. And I, I don't wanna talk about it like I'm, I'm here and it's not your choice. And it is something that we had to process a lot together. And I have shared with Phil, you know, I gave myself a lot of space to have. Processing around the changes in our relationship and the implications of what our life could be based on Phil's health. I had a lot of clarity for myself early on, uh, maybe like six months into Phil being sick that I needed to give myself. Space emotionally to fill off the options of, you know, being in this relationship, not being in this relationship. So that being in the relationship was something that I knew I was choosing and not something that I felt I was obligated to be in to, you know, try to be a good person.
Anita Rao
How did you get to that clarity? That sounds so. Wise, how are you doing that?
Lauren Hill-Hoover
Thankfully, I had a wonderful friend who's my business partner who created a lot of space for me to talk with her about that. And she also loves Phil. She's known us for the vast majority of our relationship, and she created a really safe space for me to like verbalize. Those things to really process like the difficulty of what we were going through in our relationship and also that I love Phil so much and love him for who he is and not for what he does, and that ultimately when I was able to verbalize that. Like I'm in this relationship because I love this person and how much I feel loved by Phil is really precious to me. How much I feel seen by him and how much I feel I'm able to be the fullest, most complete expression of myself and our relationship is really dear to me. And, uh. Once I realized that that's what is the most important thing to me in a relationship, it's not whether or not Phil is able to work full time or whether or not he's able to cook for me or go to the grocery store or do any number of things. Once I had that clarity, it was, it was an easy decision. That's not to say that us navigating, you know, continuing to navigate his illness was easy, but it was an easy decision to continue to commit to our relationship.
Anita Rao
Phil, I'm curious about like, what it's like to wake up the next day after a conversation like that. Like, did it feel like there was some kind of closure on this ongoing conversation? Or, or for you, was it still like, okay, I'm gonna bring this up again with Lauren in, in a couple of days? What was going through your mind?
Philip Hoover
Yeah. No, it was, this gave it some closure. I, I think, you know, it was, I was so insecure and like, you know, I didn't. Really have words to understand, like, where is all this coming from? And like, of course I feel like a burden and I feel like all this guilt, but it, it took some time for me to understand that really that was internalized ableism. Mm. You know, just like this idea that like, you know, that I was less than because I wasn't the person that she had met. And I think that when this happens to you and you're in a relationship, it's really easy to project. Your insecurities onto your partner, and this was just a huge insecurity of mine. Like I think also, you know, just the expectations we have of men in our culture and like what masculinity means and the idea of being a provider and all of that stuff. You know, you can't help but have some of that seep into, you know, the way that you look at your relationship. But yeah, I just remember, you know, the fact that she just gave me so much, I think just so much reassurance and just. Remind me, you may have all these symptoms and you know, all this stuff going on and, and feel like you've changed fundamentally, but you're still the same person to me. And that was so beautiful and made me feel so full still as a person and as a partner. I wouldn't, you know, it wasn't like some miraculous moment that then shifted everything, but it was, you know, part of a process of me. Confronting, you know, my own feelings of self-worth or lack thereof and, and ableism that, yeah.
Anita Rao
You've mentioned this, this phrase of ableism and internalized ableism a couple of times, and I'd love for you to expand on that a little bit in terms of how you started thinking about your body in a different way and, and then how that kind of unfolded in the context of y'all's partnership.
Philip Hoover
Yeah, I think I had to go through a fair amount of confronting myself. Anyone who develops debilitating illness essentially overnight, you know, has to go through, really go through the ringer, and something that's really incredible. Maybe, um, horrible about it is that when your ability to sort of do anything and reach for the things in your life that you typically would reach for, to sort of distract yourself from, you know, maybe your, your bad thoughts or anything like that, sort of your coping mechanisms, you know, they're not available to you. Yeah. So that's part of what makes, you know, chronic illness so tough is that you're just, just you and yourself and you're just sort of staring into the abyss. And I just had to go, okay, here I am and I need to learn to be in this body and move forward. And so I, I started really, you know, getting into doing whatever I could to buoy myself in terms of my mental health. And, uh, my self-care regimen and, and I consider myself to be like, pretty good about that before COVID, you know, I exercised and, um, but I really had to develop like a spiritual practice. Like, I wouldn't say that I, you know, suddenly adopted a religion by any means, but I'd say that I learned a lot from like Buddhism just in terms of like, you know, I like the Buddhist idea that like, life is suffering in a way. 'cause that just sort of makes your suffering like, oh, okay, that's. That's what this is. I just have to learn to sit with this suffering. That's what actually, that's that is actual life and to stop fighting so much against this change that I was going through and clinging so fiercely to. This identity of who I used to be. That's been really helpful for me in my journey.
Anita Rao
As you're talking about this, I am imagining, you know, the two of you in this bubble of, you know, having these, these deep emotional conversations recommitting to each other in your partnership, learning how to navigate caretaking. But you're also living with your parents. You move back in with your parents in your thirties, which I'm so curious about that dynamic, Lauren, especially for you, like what was that transition like and, and how did you manage that shift in kind of caretaking and in your marriage?
Lauren Hill-Hoover
Yes. Huge life shift to move in with Phil's mom, Maxine. Thankfully, she and I have always had a really strong and positive relationship. So you know, out of all of the scenarios of one moving in with their in-laws, I would say mine's. Pretty smooth sailing in that regard. I think what's been interesting about it, Phil, Phil and I definitely had very different experiences with it because we were moving into his childhood home. Yeah. Not my childhood home, but for me it was more just an adjustment of adapting to a different living dynamic and also like. Really staying connected to how grateful I am that Maxine has opened up her home to us, both like physically, just to like physically have a place to be. It's really reduced financial burden on me as our primary breadwinner to be able to live here, which I'm so grateful for. I think I didn't realize how much. The pressure I was putting on myself to keep everything together. The first year Phil was sick. Yeah. Because our life was, you know, the financial reality of our life was on me at that point.
Anita Rao
Phil, what was it like for you to, yeah, move back into your childhood home with your wife in this moment when you were going through so much?
Philip Hoover
At first it was incredibly hard, and I remember. Us like having to leave Los Angeles and like our whole, the whole life we'd established there, we'd been there for 10 years. That's where I worked. That's where like most of our, well, many of our really good friends lived. That was so hard. I remember thinking of it as like, like, this is sort of like us admitting defeat in a way to, to long COVID, you know? I guess that's all depends on the individual, but for me it was. It was both difficult and also it felt nice just to have to be, um, welcomed with so much support. That alone is, is huge just because some people with long COVID and, you know, various chronic illnesses deal with a lot of, um, I guess lack of belief from their family or lack of support. And I, I know people who, who don't get the support that I have. And so I, I try to be really grateful for that. And like Lauren said, not having to worry about, you know, rent and, and just having like a space where we could just kind of sift through the, I guess like the wreckage of our lives and sort of try to piece our lives back together without as much pressure Has been really nice.
Anita Rao
What was your day-to-day life looking like in that phase? I mean, we kind of left off with this image of the two of you trying to watch TV together and not being able to do that. Then you make this big move. Now you're living with your parents. What was your identity like as a couple? Are there kind of things that you all were, were doing together? What did day-to-day life look like?
Philip Hoover
Yeah, before we moved to the Bay Area, I had made a lot of progress. So we were beginning to see people again sometimes, and I was actually had started working a little bit. There was just still the, the deep mental health crisis of it all, and. There was also just still really horrible lingering symptoms. One of the things I think it's, it's important to explain is, so about 50% of people who have lung COVID actually have what's called, um, myalgic, encephalomyelitis or chronic fatigue syndrome. So me CCF s is the acronym for that, and it's an energy limiting disease. It's a neuro immune disease. Its symptoms range from anything from insomnia to muscle pain, but the worst symptom is post exertional malaise. That basically means that your symptoms can get worse with exertion, and we're not talking about like running a marathon or anything like that. Like some people can have a crash just from like sitting up. In bed.
Anita Rao
Mm. Wow.
Philip Hoover
Some people are so severe that like the act of laughing actually makes their symptoms worse. And I'm on the milder spectrum of that. So like I can, you know, at this time in our lives, like I was able to go on walks, um, and, you know, work part-time, but I was still kind of like learning, oh, this is what's, this is what's actually happening to me. I think there was some denial on, on my part. Um, but this is also just like we were falling through the cracks of like a medical system that is not able to really help people with complex chronic illnesses. Like it took me over two years to get a diagnosis of chronic fatigue syndrome. Hmm. So I was just like, I just kept on putting myself through these, what they call push crash cycles where. You know, you, uh, expand a little bit beyond. Maybe you, you know, you walk an extra mile or you, you know, work a, an extra few hours that day and the next day you, you know, you kind of feel like you have the flu or feel like you. The, the way that I describe it to my friends is like, just like imagine the worst hangover, uh, of your life. It's like kind of how I would feel if I would push too far. So it was sort of, um, that's how I would characterize that period of time. Is adapting, still kind of learning like what's going on with me and. Just kind of figuring out like, oh, what is this new body that I have now and how do I live in it?
Anita Rao
Lauren, how do you feel like y'all's identity as a couple was shifting as you navigated this new normal
Lauren Hill-Hoover
at that point that we moved up here? So the, the first kind of phase of, of Phil's illness, maybe the first year of us being in LA of kind of reeling from all of the new symptoms, this completely changed body in reality. That was kind of one crisis. And then moving up here for me was a next phase of. Slowly moving toward acceptance, but very much in the grief process. And so when I look back on that time and I think about our relationship, I still see us in crisis and our relationship. You know, we try to maintain. Connection with each other where we could, but we were still both struggling so much emotionally with what was going on that sometimes like the best we could do was like, I can hold your hand. Mm-hmm. I don't remember us like really? Being able to do much together. I think that summer we were able to like go to the dog beach that's 20 minutes away from us and take our dog. We still had like our, our dog routine that we were able to maintain, but I don't think we were yet. I. Had created our new system together that at at least emotionally felt settled. It's really difficult for me to pinpoint like exactly what that period of time looks like. 'cause I reflect back on it and it's just like sad is what I remember.
Anita Rao
When was there a next chapter in the story? When did things begin to shift again in your, in your memory, Lauren?
Lauren Hill-Hoover
In my memory, things began to shift again. The beginning of 2024. That was a big turning point for me of realizing that I really needed to invest more in fully processing my emotional experience and taking Phil up on his offers to listen to what I was going through. That was something that was really challenging for me in the beginning because my knee jerk. Reaction was like, I just need to support this person and I can't add anything on that's gonna be an additional burden or sadness to them. So I was really, I had a really hard time sharing my emotional experience with Phil in the first, in the early years of him being ill. But I, I had a bit of an emotional breakdown at the beginning of 2024 and realized that I really needed to approach my life differently. And that was a really big turning point for me and like having better practices to be in touch with my emotional reality and process that and verbalize it to fill within our relationship and allow him to get to participate as a support and partner to me and what I was going through and kind of moving. Toward opening up, uh, an area for partnership in our relationship where a lot of our dynamic had been like totally flipped on its head, and we, we didn't really know what to do with it.
Anita Rao
Yeah.
Lauren Hill-Hoover
And then Phil also had a, a turning point later that year, but I, I feel like we both had a. Different experiences that we needed to have that allowed us to shift perspective and really come both, I think mainly into acceptance around the difficulty of what we were going through and having that acceptance first created a lot more space for acceptance around both the limitations and also possibilities of what our life could look like moving forward.
Anita Rao
Yeah. Phil, what was happening for you in 2024?
Philip Hoover
I was still kind of oscillating between, you know, going through these relapses of my health, but mentally I was just really trying to stay committed to, to acceptance, but then having really big setbacks, you know, and I think, I guess you could call that just like the, the grief process. Like I was just sort of ping ponging between stages of grief, I think. But coming into more acceptance. Yeah, and I think what helped was well time, first of all, but then also just like I took some psilocybin uhhuh and I had a pretty profound experience. It was pretty scary at first, but I think that that experience was sort of the culmination of a lot of, a lot of work of just like. I can be with these symptoms and still have a life. Hmm. And that is a really, I think that's such an important thing for people with chronic illness to get to. And it's so hard to get to that place. And I think that learning to be in my new body and not be so afraid of it and maybe did something to turn the volume down on like the, the danger signals and the feelings of like fight or flight of just like. You know, just dealing with my symptoms on a minute by minute basis.
Anita Rao
Just ahead, we'll talk with Philip and Lauren about how they're adapting their relationship to match the realities of Philip's long COVID diagnosis from re-imagining their sex life to considering if or how they want to become parents. Stay with us after this break.
This is embodied. I am Anita Rao. Around 400 million people globally have been diagnosed with some form of long COVID. Philip Hoover is one of them and he is been grappling with symptoms now for three years. We've been talking with Philip and his wife, Lauren Hill Hoover, about how living with this illness has changed their lives and romantic partnership. While Philip still experiences fatigue and difficulty exercising, his health is now a lot more stable, which means that he and Lauren have been able to revive parts of their relationship that they abandoned at the onset of his illness, like sex.
Philip Hoover
Yeah. So at first it was. You know, when you get as sick as as I was, there's just like, no, there's no room for sex. Yeah. That just becomes, it's like very much at the bottom of the hierarchy of, of needs when you're just like trying to survive life. So at first it was just like, okay, that's not a thing that. We're gonna do right now. And then as you know, I was sort of looking at the, like, what is my body now I've realizing that my health had really impacted my libido, and that was actually one of the things that did show up on a test, believe it or not, interesting. And almost nothing, nothing that showed up. But my, my hormones were really impacted. So it, uh, actually cut my testosterone in half. And, um. My, my hormones have since recovered, but for a while, the act of sex was just like painful.
Anita Rao
Mm.
Philip Hoover
And you know, when you're experiencing so much discomfort and pain and uncertainty and then like this one thing that, you know, you're one of the few things that you're hoping can sort of let you escape those feelings and that you can use to, to bring more intimacy with your partner and engage with your partner and is to also taken away. It's, that was. That was really tough. Um, and also I just felt, I think really emasculated too by that. But things sort of slowly kind of figured themselves out and we we're still navigating that. But I'd say, you know, in a way it's actually made us, I think it's brought us into a deeper kind of intimacy. I think we have to communicate more, and I would say. I'm sorry that my parents might have to hear this, but that we, that we like, I think we actually enjoy our sex lives more now than before.
Anita Rao
Hmm, that's interesting.
Philip Hoover
Yeah.
Anita Rao
Lauren, tell me more about it. From your perspective, do you share that the reflection.
Lauren Hill-Hoover
I do, I definitely do. As Phil mentioned, going through this both with the, the physical changes as as they impacted our sex life, but also just going through this experience generally, we really had to improve our communication and that fostered a lot more intimacy. Our relationship, I think it was maybe three or four months into moving up here. We started seeing a new therapist together who specifically focuses on sex. And while we actually rarely talk about sex with her, incidentally, we, you know, we do as it comes up. But it's funny that that was the main thing we wanted to focus on with her. And then, you know. Life had other things that needed to be addressed, but she's also given us some really wonderful tools, uh, both like as it relates to intimacy. She gave us an exercise that was really meant to like, unpack and help move away from kind of entering into sex with a destination in mind. Mm yep. Which has been really useful. And even then, just like talking about it more like. Talking more about what we want and like, and having that intimacy in our sex has, I think, made it more connected and therefore more pleasurable.
Anita Rao
What is the day to day of y'all's life like now? Like Phil, what are the, the symptoms that you're still dealing with and, and how does it kind of shape how the two of you are able to operate as a couple?
Philip Hoover
I have made a ton of progress in the last three years, but especially in the last year. And I would say that there are days where if you didn't tell me that I, I had long COVID, I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't really know. Hmm. Like, and, and uh, that doesn't mean that there, you know, that it's not there. It's, it's, uh. It's considered like a, a relapsing and remitting illness. Some people can actually fully recover, but, you know, chronic fatigue syndrome and myalgia, encephalomyelitis, that, that is something that I'm just sort of learning to, to think of as this is something I'm gonna be managing for a long time. So I still have to be mindful about not overdoing it. Like I can't really exercise. I can walk pretty much as much as I want, so I, you know, I really. Love while going on walks, being out in nature, I'm still working part-time and I'm looking more into moving into full-time work, so that's like a really good sign. We are planning on traveling more. We went, actually went to Mexico last November and that was a huge deal for me 'cause I was like, it was actually incredible because when your world shrinks down to being so small and you feel like you've lost access to it. It was like, and then you go to being in like Mexico City and eating at all these, you know, nice restaurants and, and just being able to walk around the city. It was, it was just such a sense of freedom and expansiveness that I, I was worried at one point that I would never experience again. And so that was incredible for, for me and for us. I think. And you know, we would. Uh, we would like to, you know, move into our own place. Again, we're starting to look into that and I think we just, I think we think of our life as like very simple. We love each other a lot. We want to continue to be together and stay well, and we, you know, we might not have the exact life we thought we would have at this point in time, but we've survived something that is, uh, incredibly, incredibly difficult to survive. And we've learned a lot about ourselves and each other along the way.
Anita Rao
Lauren, are there, I mean, Phil mentioned getting back to traveling again and that being a big change. Are there other kind of decisions that you all have made hard decisions or, or exciting decisions about what your future's gonna look like in, in the wake of knowing that, you know, some of these symptoms for Phil are gonna be here for the long term and, and you all kind of have a different life than you may be expected.
Lauren Hill-Hoover
Definitely, you know, one of the, the big ones is parenthood. You know, very early on in our relationship, we both expressed to each other that we wanted to be parents, and so we just, you know, like assumed we were on that trajectory at some point in life. And then Phil got sick and our life was in crisis for, you know, a significant amount of time. For me personally, that kind of spun me out into my own. Journey of like, do I really wanna be, do, do I even wanna be a parent anymore? And I had the opportunity to do, um, this really great book called Motherhood, is It for Me, last summer and just kind of went through a process for myself of really getting to revisit and unpack my relationship to parenthood. And I hadn't realized, I mean, it, it's silly 'cause it seems so obvious. Of course our experience that we had would impact how I'm feeling about parenthood, but I hadn't really. Thought about, you know, how much it was inhibiting my ability to re really be able to connect to whether or not I desire to be a parent.
Anita Rao
Hmm.
Lauren Hill-Hoover
Phil, it's been really consistent for him that he desires to be a parent. And so after I, I had this experience and came back to this clarity around desiring to be a parent, but not necessarily attached to that happening through pregnancy. Phil and I have been in conversation together about what that could look like, you know, early on in his illness. Uh, the future just was irrelevant to us. We didn't talk about it. We didn't think about it. Like anything related to the future was just like non-existent. Yeah. And then we had a period of the future exists, but it doesn't for us. Uh, so the things we thought we were. Gonna get to do or have, we're not going to. And now we've arrived in a place of like the future exists and it is uncertain and full of possibility. We don't exactly know what that means for us. There are obviously like really big implications as it relates to parenthood and Phil's health. That is still a conversation that we're in together. One of the things that this experience has taught us is like the best we can do is be really clear with ourselves about what we, what we want, and what we need today and be. Open to what will come into our path in the future that's out of our control. And that knowing like in love and compassion for ourselves and each other, like there's so much that we can get through and difficult things we'll continue to experience in life, but also a lot of beautiful things we'll experience and we couldn't possibly imagine all of them. So I think right now we're just in a, we're in a really open. Place of, there's a lot like percolating and marinating and we will see what happens. You all had an experience
Anita Rao
early in your partnership that happens in a lot of partnerships, which is like a change in, in a caretaking dynamic, one person needing to care take for the other, or going in and out of periods like that. I'm curious about how navigating that and having this experience together has informed how you all are thinking about. Caretaking for each other's future health and, and how it's informed those conversations between you all?
Lauren Hill-Hoover
That's a great question. We haven't, we haven't talked about it oddly enough. I think the way that that's come up in our relationship is. You know, everyone at one point or another experiences illness in their life or in their relationship, and we happen to be experiencing it now. We know we will experience more as we go throughout our life. I think, at least for me and Phil, I'm curious how you are relating to this. I think I have a sense of. Fortitude iss not exactly the right word because I think early on in this experience I was like white knuckling, like we are gonna get through it. I'm determined that we're gonna get through it and now I feel like in this softer place of, but like a strength in that softness of like whatever comes, we will get through it and we'll navigate it both together, but also really critically like us getting through this has not just been on. Me and Phil in our relationship, like we've had emotional, physical, financial support from other people in our lives that has really helped us get through this experience. And so I think for me it's more of a like a, remembering how important it is to continue to nurture our relationship, our romantic partnership, but also our relationship with the other people in our lives. The support that. We give the people we love and then the support that we get to receive back from them in those relationships and that in that and in community will be, if not okay, like we will, we'll navigate whatever there is to come.
Anita Rao
Yeah. Phil, I'm curious about your reflections on that and if, if there's a story that comes to mind that kind of exemplifies like the way that the two of you are, are navigating this new normal with each other, it seems like you have reflected a lot together and have a lot of shared compassion and, and knowledge of, of what it means to kind of go through this together. But I'm just curious if there's kind of a, a moment or a visual of the two of you that's coming to mind.
Philip Hoover
We talk a lot about, you know, just sort of what we've been through and, and you know, how tough it's been and how it's shown that, you know, our love for each other I think is really unconditional. And I, I think back to, you know, being at the altar when you, you know, you make that vow to your partner in sickness and in health and. Most of us think of that vow as sort of like a, almost like a footnote. It's like something we just sort of have to say at the altar, um, that we don't really think much about, but we've now been confronted with that, you know, head on. And I know like people say. In order to really understand your partner or know if you should be together, you should travel or you should like move in together. But to me, like nothing really reveals the nature of your relationship like illness. So we've already learned that about ourselves, like it's the thing that we fear the most, and I feel like we've learned that we can hold onto each other through that. And if we can do that, I, I, I do feel like more confident than ever that we can get through anything together. Yeah. And what Lauren said about, you know, I think we, we like to otherwise illness and think it won't happen to us, but we know very well that it, that it does, you know, disability eventually comes for us all. And so recognizing that in each other, you know, that we're, we're human and instead of thinking of that as maybe something morbid, I think it's, it's helped Lauren and I, you know, rec, recognize each other's humanness and yeah, brought us into a. A deeper relationship with each other.
Anita Rao
I would love to end with following up on, on one kind of line that you wrote in the piece for the New York Times. You were talking about kind of your life mantras. At one point it was, we'll get our lives. Back then it was, we're managing. I'd love to know for each of you, like what is your shared mantra for your relationship now?
Philip Hoover
I'd say, uh, yeah, we're still, uh, we're managing, but um, we're doing, I'd say we're doing pretty good. Yeah. Things are, uh, maybe a little better than, than, you know, just managing, like we, you know, we, I feel like things are a little more, there's more a sense of possibility, whereas before. There really wasn't. And I like, I, I love thinking about those mantras actually 'cause like we'll get our lives back. That really represents our old way of thinking. Like we were really like, we need to get everything back. Just how it was. And I think just, just thinking like we're doing, we're doing pretty well, we're getting by. And, uh, I think that that really helps. And just like being kind to ourselves and reminding ourselves like we've been through. A lot, and it's okay to take things slow and it's okay to like just slowly figure out what is our life gonna look like now,
Anita Rao
Lauren, what's your mantra?
Lauren Hill-Hoover
I would say mine is, we're living, Phil knows this. I, I have a favorite poem. It's called Wild Love by Rka and um. To me, the poem, it's been one of my favorite poems for a really long time now, but it, it really captures how I feel about living life now. One of my favorite lines from the poem is, is not impermanence, the very fragrance of our days, which for me to qualify this statement of we're living is like. We are living life like with all of its pain and beauty and joy and sorrow, like we're living it. We're not trying to avoid anything or change things that are out of our control to change. We're just being in the present moment and living our life together.
Anita Rao
Philip Hoover and Lauren Hill-Hoover, thank you both so much for the conversation.
Lauren Hill-Hoover
Thank you, Anita.
Philip Hoover
Thank you for having us.
Anita Rao
You can find out more about everyone featured on today's show at our website, embodied w unc.org. You can also find a link there to Philip's Modern Love essay, as well as all episodes of Embodied. You can also listen to Embodied as a weekly podcast, find behind the scenes and bonus content for our show by following us on Instagram. Our handle is at embodied WUNC. Today's episode is produced by Kaia Findlay and edited by Amanda Magnus. Wilson Sayer also provided editorial guidance. Nina Scott is our intern, and Jenni Lawson, our technical director, Quilla, wrote our theme music. This program is recorded at the American Tobacco Historic District, North Carolina Public Radio is a broadcast service of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I am Anita Rao.