The alarm clock jolts me out of my sleep. I attempt to raise my head high enough to see what time it is—8:30. The hour is not too ungodly, but I fell asleep merely four hours ago. I slip on a magazine as I stumble to silence the blaring noise that has now filled the room, and awaken my roommate. I’m definitely not going to class.
Before you judge me, I am under doctor’s orders to sleep. That’s right—eat and sleep. I have mono, bronchitis and a sinus infection. My desktop is covered with various medications and doctor’s excuses. I have been to the Student Health Center at least half a dozen times, and I call my doctor and the staff by their first names. They call me their “resident sickie.”
I’ve been sick since the second week of this semester. At first I was only diagnosed with mono. People often joked that mono was “the perfect illness.” I had an excuse to sleep all day, miss class and lose weight due to the hyperactive metabolism brought on by mono. But I had a lot on my plate. At the time I was an editor at The Voice, a member of the crew team, an intern in a political office, and I have classes to go to. Mono was not going to break me down.
I took one full day off from all of my involvements, and the next day I went to class. That morning I got dressed, and told myself that I was fine.
I tried to shake off the feeling of overwhelming fatigue—I was on the crew team and used to feeling crappy.
From that moment on I was at full pace.
A few weeks later I was cleared to go back to full activity level, which really didn’t mean anything. I was feeling pretty good until one day, walking back from crew practice, soaking wet from another long erg work out, and started coughing. I went to bed and hoped the feeling would pass in the morning. No such luck.
The next morning, my ears rang as I tried to keep my head up to make it possible for me to at least feign interest in what was going on in class. Why did I ever think that taking an 8:50 class was a good idea? The professor rambled on about some abstract idea as the sound of my hacking cough trumps the sound of his voice. The professor gave me a pitying look as he tries to continue his lecture. After the 75-minute class came to an end I draged my body up the stairs to go to my next 75-mintue class, which happens to be philosophy. I couldn’t follow the discussion of Hegel’s view of Epistemology thanks to the ringing sound in my ears. This was my typical Thursday morning.
For a normal, healthy person this would be difficult, but with someone with mono this is just ridiculous. I call sick into my internship and then take a nap. The second my head hit the pillow I’m dead to the world until crew practice.
The next morning I visited my new-found friends at the student health center. Katie, my nurse practitioner, gave me something for my cough and sent me home. It was just bronchitis—no big deal. Two days later I made the now familiar walk towards the student health center. Each step felt heavy and my head spun—I could not wait to see Katie. I My mind was distracted as I thought about how I couldn’t afford to still be sick, mid-terms were coming up and spring racing season was a mere 3 weeks away. Kate came in and interrupted my self-pitying thoughts. The examination at this time was now familiar, and went by quickly as I told Katie what was new in my life. By this point, she knew what kind of milk I liked in my cereal.
I was told I had a sinus-infection—the third diagnosis I had received in the last three weeks. Sweet.
I had to quit something. I couldn’t keeps going at my same pace. I was continually falling further behind in class, crew, my internship, and at The Voice. Instead of taking time to recover, and do one or two things well, I was doing 4 things really poorly. My conversation was starting to sound like something out of a nursing home-bound geezer, focused soley on my ailments illnesses.
In the grand Georgetown tradition, I quit crew. Two-hour practices that require at least a two-hour nap afterward often made focusing on anything but how tired I felt near impossible. Removing crew from my life was literally the best decision I’ve made during my short time at Georgetown. I could now focus the things that I really care about in my life—getting well, school, interning, and my editorship at The Voice.
It’s been about three months, and I’m feeling somewhat healthy. I can wake up in the morning, and make it through my day without taking a nap. I’m still stretched a little thin, but not too thin. Life’s boring when you don’t have a million things to do. I still don’t get enough sleep, but that’s my own fault. The big difference is that now I have enough energy to procrastinate and go to bed at 3a.m., and this is something that I greatly missed.
