After publishing work on allergies and “pregnancy sickness” (which doesn’t occur only in the morning, Profet notes), she had her nocturnal epiphany about menstruation in 1988. “It was in cartoon form, like the film on ’the wonders of womanhood’ they showed in school, to the girls, when I was 10 or 11.” In her dream, the ovaries and fallopian tubes were pale yellow, and the uterus was bright red, filled with black triangles flowing out of it with the red. “I woke up and saw immediately that the triangles were pathogens,” says Profet. She’s Pleased that her grant provides financial freedom, “so you can leave an institution and go sit on a mountaintop and contemplate if you want.” And dream new dreams.
