My wake-up call decided to dial in on my life this past Tuesday afternoon.
My Tuesday began as most of them usually do: I woke up feeling nauseous, more nauseous than usual, but still nauseous. In other words, nothing new. Same old same old, blah blah blah. I went to my voice class and started to feel better. I truly enjoy being in that class (I'm a huge nerd. It happens) and it always puts me in a good mood. I then went back to my apartment and made a gluten-free sandwich half of which I ate. And it was so delicious. It tasted like one of the best sandwiches I had ever had (even though I only had turkey and lettuce in it, but that's how I usually eat it). Met with a college of education advisor and that put me in a really good mood. Usually when I leave there I feel very upset. But not this Tuesday. It felt like Tuesday was my lucky day. Next I went to work for an hour and I was feeling even better. After that I went to my American history classroom, sat down and finished my lunch, and waited for class to begin. I was actually somewhat interested in the topic that we were going to discuss, McCarthyism. At least this was slightly more interesting than what had been previously discussed in that class. And not a minute before class began, the room started spinning, my world was spinning. I was falling slowly. Very slowly. I begun to panic. "I need to leave here. I can't hold on. I can't breathe." I'm surprised that I was able to get as far as I did. I grabbed my bags and went up to the teacher and as calmly as I could I told her that I was feeling dizzy and that I needed to leave the classroom. Even though the room kept tilting to its side and I felt like I could have fallen down at any point, I walked up the stairs of that lecture hall and through the double doors. My breathing consisted of very short quick breaths and I thought to myself, "Where can I go? I need to find a quiet and very empty space, and just breathe." My eyes begun to blur and I realized that there was a bathroom a couple doors down. Using the wall as my guide and support, I made it to the bathroom which was thankfully empty at the time. And I cried. People who know me very well know that I never cry. Never. And at that moment, it felt like I would never stop crying. I had never lost so much control over my body and I had no idea what was happening to it, what was happening to me. And I was upset. Upset that something else was thrown into the mix of problems that I already had to deal with on a constant basis. Why was my body doing this to me, what was (is) happening to me? I ended up going to the doctor's office right after that only to find that they still have no idea what's wrong with me and now with my almost passing out episode I don't think that anybody has any idea what's going on. At all.
Let me just say now that I have never felt more terrified in my life than I did on that day. It's mostly common knowledge now that I've been having weird health issues and have been in and out of the doctor's office and hospital constantly. But out of the past 16 months, I had never reached that high of a degree of fear until this Tuesday past. But I do know that I have to have more time set out in my schedule to let my body recuperate and heal itself on a daily basis. I work everyday and am taking 18 credits this semester. So I'm thinking that even though I don't want to, I think that I need to do what is best for my body/health and drop a class. My schedule is so intense this semester that I don't even have time for a proper lunch. And I'm usually too nauseous to have breakfast. So my first (and last) meal of the day tends to be dinner. Which is extremely unhealthy. Especially for someone like me who is in and out of the hospital. Three nights a week, I usually am back to my apartment around 8:00pm, which means that I don't eat dinner until around 9pm. That's way too late to be eating my first full meal of the day. So I think that I'm going to change that by dropping a class. And changing a lot of other things in my life.
Life is too short to be constantly working and constantly stressed and unwell. I want and very much need to enjoy what few moments of it there are left.
This post was super-wordy. I mostly apologize.
