Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Overworking myself, yet I can't stop!

Today was a prime example of the fact that I am overworking myself, not balancing time correctly, and definitely not getting enough sleep. I got less than 5 hours last night, and ended up missing my opera history class, which I really didn't want to do, but the essay for research methods just hadn't come together yet, and I usually have almost no time on tuesdays-basically, I have classes straight through with very little break time from 8:30am until 6:30pm-with travel time between buildings, I have only about 45 minutes at most, and that only happens twice, and both of those times I need to be eating either lunch or dinner inbetween. So, I hid out in one of the other libraries on campus and worked on the essay, which once again got emailed in at 11:59...ouch. Why does this feel incredibly like deja vu!? And, once again, I have a 20th century assignment due tomorrow that has basically not been touched. Okay, so those are signs of things, but the true signs began around noon, when I had absolutely no appetite, although I forced myself to eat a small muffin I had packed and my greek yogurt (very slowly I might add). Whatever, I thought, I haven't had much of an appetite at all the past few days anyways. But, then in Wind Ensemble, I noticed that my lower stomach was cramping a bit, and that although I was incredibly thirsty (which I really shouldn't have been), I couldn't have more than really small sips of water at once because I was a bit nauseous. It wasn't anything major, I managed to get through, and the second half was a woodwind sectional and a bit more relaxed atmosphere and everything anyways. What really started to concern me a bit was that I kept feeling like I couldn't take a deep enough breath, like there was pressure inside my chest or something blocking things. It wasn't wheezy, or congested, I didn't need to cough, nothing like that. When it was at it's worst, I would start feeling my heart rate and blood pressure go up. Although my stomach issues began to resolve somewhat after Wind Ensemble, the breathing got worse for a while before it got better. Sitting down in the lounge before my Research Methods course, I actually had to stand up because I could not breath enough sitting down and figured that standing up straight instead of some slouching would probably be a good thing. I still hadn't had more than the muffin and fat-free greek yogurt, although I made myself some peppermint tea, which probably helped settle things. The breathing issue/blood pressure/heart rate/type of beating/whatever it was was enough that I had to steady myself more than once going up the three floors to my class, and in class I definitely got the very light-headed starting to black out feeling a couple of times, but just as quickly as that started and I began wondering how on earth in those desks I would manage to put my head between my knees, it cleared up. At the break of Research Methods, I decided to make myself some green tea as I was tired. It wasn't cool enough to drink until I got on the bus. The green tea was another mistake...I did not realize that I had not eaten for around seven hours. Well. I drink my green tea, and transfer buses. THEN it hits me...and I remember why I usually don't drink green tea on an empty stomach, especially if I am feeling a bit sick to begin with. I call them nausea spasms, it feels like it gnaws the stomach a bit in a sort of spasm-ish way as the nausea wave goes past. It was the worst it's ever been, and I was seriously doubting my stomach's strength there, especially as I was still close to 40 minutes from home. Usually, if I start having the green-tea-stomach-issue, eating something helps, but because I hadn't been feeling well to begin with, it was a huge challenge. It took me almost ten minutes to eat a single almond, and I think in total I only managed to eat five. Although the effects lessened, it was still affecting me when I got home for a couple of hours, during which I was working on the essay. All I've been able to eat since is a few more almonds and about a half a cup of dry cheerios, plus a cup of peppermint tea. Perhaps it is a bit more than exhaustion going on, as when I felt my neck randomly, the lymph nodes there felt quite a bit larger than normal and a bit more tender, but I bet that could be attributed to physical stress and exhaustion as well. Either way, despite all this, I'm still planning on having to do an all-nighter this weekend to do some catch up. But, I have to get more sleep on wednesday night and thursday night so that I am prepared for my driving test friday (yikes!).

And with that, I go to bed with my 20th century assignment...

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