MISDIAGNOSED: Book One

Chapter Fourteen - Utter Chaos

This is one of the toughest chapters that I have ever had to type. Listening to the rain outside whilst knowing that I had already taken my medication is keeping me as calm as possible to type this chapter. So, let me get you up to speed. All of this chaos took place between the 25th of October and the 02nd of November. The Wednesday night I had experienced some acid burning in my stomach but I wasnt alarmed as I was used to my stomach tending to burn sometimes. So, I was keeping myself hydrated with water and making sure that I stayed calm because I was having heartburn as well. What happened the following days clearly showed that NONE of what was to come was anything that I had ever been used to.

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Thursday, 26th October

I dont quite remember certain moments as it was all so awful that I have already repressed them. I do, however, remember that this morning I had peanut butter and toast for breakfast with my cup of coffee as usual. I had already had a bit of stress lingering in my body after completing my English essay exam that Monday, the 23rd. However, this day, there was a huge complication that none of us expected to run into. To get you up to speed on what I am speaking about. Our exams worked as follows for this semester. Due to having mostly theoretical modules (Subjects), they would open on a certain day and close on another day. This is to ensure that you have enough time to do research, plan your essay, type it out and submit it without rushing. Usually you received emails up to this point which indicates whether you qualify to write the exam due to your average semester mark at that point. None of the students had received that email for this specific module and that had already made us panic as to whether we could write or not. The essay itself was not available on the universitys website either. If you are wondering Why panic over an examination? It is not the end of the world, well if you fail the exam then you receive a low mark. That low mark could become a fail mark at the end of the year, which could result in you having to repeat the year. This is because if you dont pass one module then you have to repeat the year and after the trials and tribulations that were faced to get to this point in my student path, you can imagine that I was not about to have that taken from me. We panicked, made calls, made emails, all in the span of two hours and received nothing. Then we received notice that the exam essay question would be available the next day. Up until that point at 1pm, I had only eaten the toast and then made myself some mashed potato for lunch in a small bowl as I was too hungry to cook. By then my stomach acid was boiling by how hungry I had been and the stress amplified it. After that, I started to feel extremely uncomfortable. My body was getting hot and cold, my back was aching, my stomach was twisting within itself, my mind became out of sorts, and as soon as my mouth started salivating I knew that I had to run to the bathroom. After throwing up my guts twice in a row, I felt a lot of relief. So it was just a moment to keep myself hydrated as slowly as possible in order to get liquids into my body but not rushing it. I was not touching any solid food as I was just focusing on keeping my body relaxed. Then when it came to dinner time, I did something stupid. Guess who had two packs of spicy indomie noodles for dinner? Me. It was delicious but during the night, my stomach was burning again and I had heartburn. I just assumed that it would go away and that the chilli oil in the noodles must have been burning off any bacteria or honestly, I have no idea what I was thinking at that point.

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Friday, 27th October

The acid that had been accumulating in the previous few days, had become a monster by today. Keep in mind that the previous Friday to Monday I had been reading almost five hundred pages of a novel that I needed to read for an English examination. Literally finished the book at 11:40am and the exam was available at 12pm. So you can imagine that I was typing that essay from 12pm until almost 3pm and only then chose to relax. All before the burning happened the Wednesday and the throwing up twice on the Thursday. This day was as if nothing was ever going to be fine in the world again. I had some toast with peanut butter for breakfast with my coffee as I had done for the past two days. Then I spent the morning doing my research for my Anthropology essay exam that finally became available that morning. I was researching the information I needed, writing up all my references, planning out how I was going to write each paragraph as it was a 2000-word essay, so I wanted it to be perfect. After doing this for maybe an hour or two, my body felt strange again. My stomach was feeling unsettled but I normally wait it out because if I eat when my stomach hurts like that, then I know that nothing will stay down. Once the stomach had cooled off, guess what this idiot did again? Had spicy indomie noodles for lunch. I deserved a slap in the face at that point. Or perhaps when I had the noodles the previous night when my stomach acid was clearly already high after throwing up twice. But after eating, about an hour later, chaos ensued. I started feeling aches in my lower back, my body temperature was getting hot and cold, I was having cold sweats, my mind felt disoriented, my mood was easily irritable, my stomach was completely out of sorts. It was as if it was burning, twisting, ripping, tearing, breaking, crumbling, and stabbing all at the same time. That was when I first realised that this was something different to what I had experienced the last five years. Not realising that with the amount of coffee I had been drinking in the week, I had not drank enough water along with it to make sure that I was not dehydrated. At that point, I had already felt like the biggest idiot on the planet. Yet it was only the beginning.