The FHP TMI Post!

It's been awhile.

As I've mentioned in several places, April and early to mid May is difficult for me professionally. I am an adjunct professor, and even though I'm only part time, it takes TIME. The end of the semester is filled with crazy. Students turn in their final projects, and while I LOVE seeing how far they have come, they take forever to grade. There is a bunch of administrative stuff that I have to do this time of year, and this is when the students who are not satisfied with their current grade start the panicked e-mails. It's just a lot, and it consumes my life at the end of every term.

This is why I was not surprised that I was so exhausted the past few weeks. Thankfully, I had several freezer meals waiting, and I've gotten much better at doing my Flylady routines. Had I not taken these precautions when I had time, the past month or so would have been absolute chaos! I'm usually wiped out for a few days after grades are due.

However, the exhaustion did not lift after the usual one or two days. I found myself falling asleep every time I sat down. I found myself avoiding doing anything but the things that absolutely had to be done, and those things were done in the most minimal way possible. Instead of doing a whole load of laundry, I would wash a single load of stuff we absolutely HAD to have. I did not go grocery shopping for fresh stuff because the store seemed so...big. How could I walk through that huge store? I would lay down and nap after I got my "had to do" stuff done and sleep. Surely this stress would pass soon, and I'd feel better, right? How long could this last?

Finally I started running a fever and noticing one other thing that I won't put here and I called my doctor. She diagnosed me with an acute bladder infection. I've only had one one other in my life, and it was nothing like this one! I had more obvious symptoms and caught it right off. For this one, until the day I called my doctor, the only symptom that I really had was severe exhaustion. She was amazed that I was not feeling much, much worse, as the infection was way out of hand. It is still possible that I may have to get a CT scan to make sure it has not damaged my kidneys. (We're waiting on some lab results before that decision is made.)

I learned two things from this experience. One was that doing things like freezer meals and basic cleaning routines is so, so worth it. You can't always predict what is going to happen. Even the idea of going through a drive through was overwhelming, so I thanked God that I had extra meals in my freezer. The second was that I should not always attribute things like being tired to stress! For a day or two is fine, but this dragged on, and it was way worse than anything I'd ever experienced since I had mono in college. (That was a blast, I tell ya!) Ignoring things is not a great strategy, assuming things is not much better. My doctor would not have judged me if it turned out to just be stress. Since it was not stress, she would have caught it sooner, and I would not have lost weeks of barely functioning. I'm still not 100%, and it just seems so silly that I ignored something so basic until my body refused to let me ignore it anymore.

What are you ignoring (or attributing to stress!) today? Go do something about it right now! :)