Emma Scott: My Hardest Personal Journey Yet

     In this blog I wanted to discuss the hardest journey yet of my life. It started at the end of my freshman year at college. The last month of school I started to feel sick constantly. It started off not being surprising because I have been diagnosed with migraines and abdominal migraines for a few years. These diagnoses have made it so that I feel sick constantly, but with medicine they became manageable. When I started to feel ill at the end of the semester it would always start with me getting a migraine and then my stomach just feeling blah constantly. I asked myself repetitively “What is wrong with me?” and “Why am I feeling like this?”. I chalked it up to the fact that studying for finals was starting and I was not getting enough sleep. I figured that because I was not getting enough sleep it was making all my other symptoms much worse.

    Something about me that my close friends and family know is that I am terrified of being physically sick. I have an irrational fear of the possibility of throwing up, so this became a huge problem for me as I started to feel sicker and sicker throughout the last month of freshman year because it instilled panic. I managed to persevere and push through the last few weeks of my freshman year and was excited to go home and start my summer break. Summer has always been my favorite time of year. I love the warm weather, being outside, going to the beach, swimming, traveling, and so many other things. Unfortunately, I was so sick that I could do nothing but lay in my bed. I went to numerous doctors throughout the summer and it was not until the end of summer that they diagnosed me. I was diagnosed with mild gastroparesis, which in simpler terms means that my stomach is not emptying in the time that it should. Because of this my food was just sitting in my stomach which is why I had been feeling so sick constantly and could not do anything except sleep and rest. All I could think about was trying to figure out what I had and how I got it. The first part of my question was answered with my diagnosis, but the second part is still unknown. The doctors do not know why my body started to do this, all they could say is that women my age are prone to this chronic illness.

    I was thankful that I finally had a diagnosis, but also upset that I was just diagnosed with yet another chronic illness. Throughout this journey I have always been extremely thankful that I only have the condition in a mild manner. There are so many people who have gastroparesis and have it much worse than I do. I am lucky enough to only feel ill, still be able to eat solid food, and continue my life as a college student. This is something that I am still battling with everyday and it instills many fears in me, because I can no longer be a passenger in a car or travel without being sick. Traveling is something that I love to do and it has now had to be put on hold a bit until I can find a better method of traveling. I have become the designated driver anywhere I go. This personal journey has affected me in many different ways, but I have learned how to stand up for myself and the things that I need to do in order to stay as healthy as possible. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Kip Redick Introduction

Welcome to the Heroes and Mystics blog for 2024. Make sure to start the blog with your name and the subject of the entry (Just as I have done with this post). . Blog entries will be considered informal writing assignments and as such will be graded more in relation to content than style. Blog entries will contain questions and answers to questions, as well as reflections that relate to daily classroom discussions, completion of exercises, and reading assignments. Any questions the student has while reading or completing assignments should be written in their blog. Reflections may relate to connections the student makes between discussions in this class and those in other classes, between arguments raised in the readings in this class and those raised in other classes or from informal conversations. Students are encouraged to apply the ideas learned in this class to activities that take place outside of the class. These applications make great reflections. The student should bring ques...
Read more

The Untethered Soul

Another one of the many books that I am simultaneously reading with other books that I am really excited about is The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself by Michael Alan Singer. Although I am not very far in the novel, I think that the first bit that I have read is already so rich and ties in well to Somewhere I Have Never Traveled because of the idea of the sense of self. Both works mention the idea that we as humans are always trying to grapple with our sense of selves. I think that it is a really interesting concept and my philosophy, perhaps it's just the easy out, is that our brains were simply not created to be able to comprehend things outside of our world. I think it's a great thing to try but I believe that there is so much more knowledge that we cannot know.
Read more

Iris Denner: The Iliad (Assigned Readings)

The Iliad is a Greek epic that follows Achilles throughout the Trojan War . Achilles becomes the hero of the epic by killing his enemy, Hector, brutally. This series of poems is rather violent and follows Greek tradition in writi ng style. It is simply titled with Iliad meaning the town in Troy. At the time it acted as a history story for the Greek people and was passed down through spoken word. We now attribute the writings to Homer and interpret them as something that one st rives to accomplish the greatness that Achilles reached. The journey took place during the war, making it connect well to today’s society of veterans who go on journeys throughout their time being deployed.  
Read more