This technically isn't a Struggle; it's a misfortune. However, its effects are far-reaching and will doubtlessly come up in future Struggles.
I have Labyrinthitis, which is a virus of the inner-ear. Technically, I had it and am getting better, but every now and then I still lose track of the world around me and fall over. It seems I contracted this sometime right before spring break (almost three weeks ago, now), because I spent a night in the hospital a couple days prior to leaving for break. It was my first, and hopefully last, experience riding in an ambulance (I just got the bill from the city; it was an $800 chauffeur service).
The short story is that the labyrinthitis gave me so much vertigo that it made me nauseous, and I spent an hour vomiting into a friend's toilet before it looked like it was coming up blood and she called 911. The bad news (oh yes, there's more) was that the sleep medication I take had already kicked in, so my body was trying to both throw up and fall asleep, which are somewhat mutually exclusive.
At the hospital I was misdiagnosed with gastritis because I was too out of it to explain that the fact I kept falling over was because I had vertigo, and wasn't drunk. I've never been fall-down drunk, you bastards! I've only ever been pretty-damn-but-still-standing drunk at the bachelorette party of one of my best friends, and because I was the one throwing it I reserve the right to get sloshed.
Anyway, they pumped me full of fluids again and sent me home. I spent the next few days eating carefully and feeling generally okay, until the vertigo and nausea kicked in again when I was down in Anacortes with my mother. Now there was a fun five hours driving home. Finally my primary care physician got me proper meds for labyrinthitis and I spent the second week of spring break in bed eating only "wild strawberry" flavored Jell-o and occasionally sipping a whole plethora of differently flavored Gatorades.
Blah blah blah, didn't get the chance to finish any homework or study for my major exams, etc. etc., but the school is being very kind to me to get it all worked out. That is the story as it stands.
This was not a Strugglebucket-related fault, but I do seem to attract misfortune, especially that of a bodily injury nature.
Two important things I would like to share to wrap this up:
1) It was my best friend whose toilet I was throwing up in, who called 911, who stuck with me in the ambulance and at the hospital, translating my drug-slurred responses to the medical-type folk, who was the first thing I saw when I could pry open my eyelids, who stayed until the wee hours of the morning to make sure I was okay, and who--most importantly--brought me a hedgehog named Francois.* I owe her a ton.
2) Here is a description of what vertigo feels like, for those of you fortunate enough to have never had the experience: my inner-ear suddenly goes, "Holy shit! The ground is over there now!" and my body is like, "Okay!" and my brain is like, "No it isn't! Move, feet! For fuck's sake, MOVE!" But they don't. And I fall over and crash into things.
*Apparently I clung to Francois for dear life for most of the night. One of the only things I really remember of my hospital stay was the man at the X-ray saying, "Okay, honey, I need to take a picture of your stomach; you have to let go of the hedgehog."
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