Last Wednesday, I was greeted in the afternoon with a pain in my stomach. I found little to no reason why it felt this way, so I decided to ignore it as it would probably fade away throughout the night. When I woke up for my 8:30 a.m. lab Thursday to find that it not only didn't go away, but got worse, I started to become a bit worried. However, I had a big day of errands and events for the service fraternity that I am a part of that I could not miss. Related issues arose, but I continued to push through the pain. That night, I did not fall asleep until about 5 o'clock in the morning, and I had another 8:30 a.m. the next day. There was no way I was going to make it to that class.
I spent Friday sleeping on and off, hoping that the torturous pain would finally leave with some rest. I was disappointed to find that that was not the case. I missed all my classes, including some assignments that I could not make up, and I was struggling to move. I ended up taking a shower later in the night, and when I returned to my phone, I found six missed calls from my family and roommates and texts saying that they were going to take me to the emergency room immediately.
If you knew me, you would know that paranoia and anxiety is easily instilled in me when events like this take place, so I was pretty unnerved. The doctors explained all the tests that they were going to perform to make sure I was healthy, and it was all extremely overwhelming. Luckily, I had my roommates, who have become two of my favorite people on this planet, by my side trying to make sure that I remained at ease. We laughed about the ridiculous lies we told our friends as to why we were there, a shark took my arm (in the middle of Gainesville?), lightning struck me as I ironed my hair (outside?), and the pain finally started to subside (with the help of the pain meds that were pumping through my veins, of course).
All seemed normal, I was having pretty normal reactions for pretty normal reasons, so there was no longer any need to worry. Despite that it was not some crazy, dangerous problem going on within my body, I learned a few things from that trip to the emergency room: I am a very paranoid person that has a vast imagination. I create ideas that are way scarier than the real situation at hand, the Shands ER that is ten minutes away has faster service than the one on campus, and I am surrounded by the most loving, beautiful humans on the planet.
So many people were asking for updates and genuinely cared about how I was feeling, and it was a major wake up call. When life gets hard, I know I have an army of people behind me, something that I could not say before this year. I feel extremely blessed to have such genuine people in my life.
