One day in the winter of 2010, when I was 30 years old, I felt a sudden pain in my right side. The pain was sharp and started without notice. Because a snowstorm was on the way, a friend who is an emergency room physician urged me to go to the closest emergency room without delay.

When I woke from the surgery, the doctor told me that she’d removed one of my ovaries, which had been very infected. She gave me a strong antibiotic and sent a biopsy for analysis.