I know I’m really sick when I can’t fathom the idea of consuming coffee.
I became really sick last Monday. Last Monday of the block. 4th Week Monday. Monday of doom. The Monday of all Mondays in which one would most desperately turn to coffee, in which being sick is a devastation of great proportions.
And I was sick, sick, sick. Though I initially didn’t feel sick. Just dizzy. Just repulsed by coffee when I so desperately wanted coffee. Just horrendously achy and spin-y. But I still went to class. I still scrambled around campus. I still studied. I still somehow went to ballet. (Do I remember Monday’s ballet class? No. Did I go? Yes.) I still sprinted, because it was 4th Week and one doesn’t stop for anything during 4th Week. And come 4th Week Tuesday, when I was dizzier and achier but yet somehow still unaware of what was happening internally, I still participated in my last class of the block. Still recited “Neither Out Far, Nor in Deep” by Robert Frost (though the recitation happened from my seat with my eyes partially closed as by Tuesday morning my dizziness was severe enough for me to suspect passing out a threat). Still studied and studied and studied (coffee free!) for my final exam and even took an hour break for fresh air and drove through the snow-studded Garden of the Gods then came home and studied some more and packed for Block Break and went to bed, all the while dizzy, all the while refusing to admit that my guzzling Emergen-C by the hour was my bowing down to my impending doom.
It didn’t matter whether or not I acknowledged my body’s revolt. It was too late. The illness had already sunk in deep. And when I woke Wednesday–Wednesday of 4th Week, Wednesday morning of my final exam, last day of Block 5, that So Very Very VERY important Wednesday–it was difficult to even lift my head from my pillow, let alone pull myself out of bed and take a five hour poetry exam. Have you ever had a sinus surgery? I’ve had five in my twenty-one years of life. And Wednesday morning I woke feeling as I do after the anesthesia wears off and I blink to a bright white room and some tower of a man looming over me, booming into my tender ears, “The procedure was a success, Miss Ezell, how do you feel? Do you feel great? You did great! How do you feel?”
How do I feel? How do I feel? How do I feel? I feel like you should give me some more of that magical sleep medicine so I can dream off this excruciating pain drilling through my face, that’s how I feel, Mr. All in White Medical Dude.
And it was Wednesday that I last felt this way (so, no, FYI, sinus surgeries don’t seem to do much good long term wise), and I had a class to finish and an evening plane from Denver to Salt Lake City to catch. So, I flopped out of bed and, little by little, did what I needed to do. Did my best and forgot the rest (my father is a fan of P90X and likes to drill that little mantra into my head during borderline panic attacks). I gave that exam everything I had, zipped up my bag, and–sorry fellow passengers of Flight 0282–trekked onto that airplane equipped with tissues and numbing ear drops.
So, Block 5 is behind me, completed with a somewhat painful limp of a bang. And now, for the first time since last Sunday, I’m drinking a mug of coffee. Enjoying my coffee in Park City with my family. I slept and soaked in baths and was a frightful mess the last few days, but slowly I’m regaining strength. And isn’t that the point of Block Breaks? Have a blast, relax, catch up, and prepare for the next race? Hinduism begins Monday, and though I’m still admittedly weak and shaky, it’d be a lie to say I’m not pumped. It’s like a whole new way of life awaits. And, honestly, though the First Day of the Block Feeling spins in eight times a year (or twelve, if you’re like me and take advantage of Summer Session and Half Block), such glee never gets old.
