“I don’t remember what my friend Zach and I were talking about on the phone that day, cozied in our prospective homes in the midst of a Flagstaff windstorm—if what he asked me was related to our conversation or simply out of the blue. But the question is now the only part of the conversation I’m able to recall. 

‘Are you sick in your dreams?’ he asked.”

Chronic illness already made dating hard. And then the pandemic arrived.

“I almost forgot—” my childhood friend interjected as we were wrapping up a phone call on a blustery September day. “I talked to Lindsey and she agrees that you don’t need to put a disclosure on your dating profile. You can just cross that bridge if you meet someone you like.”