It was September of 2014. I was 19 years old, a sophomore in college. The day began as any other. I woke up to get ready for school, as usual, and as soon as I opened my eyes, I realized I felt off. I woke up extremely nauseous, my stomach hurt, and I just felt terrible. My first thought was "What is going on? Am I sick? Do I have the stomach flu?" I thought I was just dealing with a bad hypoglycemic situation so I got up out of bed and went to the kitchen to get breakfast. My dad had gone to QT (a gas station) and gotten a donut for my brother and I. I managed to get some of it down, but I was unable to finish the donut. I just felt so sick. It was getting late and I was going to have to leave for school soon so I headed off to the shower. As soon as I got in the shower, I felt it coming. I proceeded to violently throw up everything in my stomach. It was horrifying. I had never thrown up so bad. Also, I had never thrown up out of no where for no apparent reason. I could not think of a reason why I would have gotten sick. But after the horror that ensued, I went about my day, not thinking too much of it, though, feeling terrible still, but I managed to get along. I figured I would not experience this again and it was only a one time thing. Wrong.
I woke up the next morning and the SAME thing happened. I began to wonder at this point what was going on. I continued to throw up every day that week and every day seemed to get worse. I could not eat lunch. My stomach hurt for most of the day. Overall, I just felt sluggish and fatigued. After that week of horror, I felt better and pretty quickly returned to normal health. Fast forward to the Fall of 2015. It began again. I kept having episodes of violent throwing up. I had no idea what was causing this and it was starting to effect my life negatively. I was not feeling well so I would have a hard time completing my homework. Worse yet, I did open up a little bit about it with some trusted people and they straight up told me that I was not actually sick because I did not "look" sick. I also had perfect attendance in my classes still so I couldn't actually be sick, could I? The throwing up intensified in the Winter/Spring of 2016. I was so sick. For two weeks I threw up that January, and it continued off and on throughout that semester. Other symptoms began to appear such as total fatigue. I was really struggling at this point. Again, I reached out to let some trusted people know and they still said I wasn't sick because I didn't look sick. I did not seem to feel as bad in the summer time as the other three seasons. But come the Fall of 2016, the illness is still sticking around. Every time I thought it was gone for good, it came back with a vengeance. That whole Fall semester of 2016, the illness plagued me. I didn't know what to do at all. I was so sick of being sick at this point. But still it continued... It is relentless. In the Spring of 2017, I was sick off and on. But something changed this time, and it wasn't for the better. The vomiting became extremely intense and painful. All of my symptoms got worse. At this point, I was projectile vomiting every time I threw up. The stomach pain was worse. I could hardly eat anything, if I was lucky because just thinking about or looking at food disgusted and sickened me. I lost weight that I didn't have to lose. The fatigue became even more. Every little thing I did exhausted me. I felt like I had run a mile after doing minor tasks. I had no energy whatsoever. Going to my classes every day was a nightmare and keeping on the homework was tough as well. I was trying to deal with an illness all while being a full time college student. There were some times where I would experience pain so bad that I would just cry. Most recently, in the Fall of 2017, I seemed to be somewhat okay throughout the semester. Well, my stomach was okay for about half of the semester. I experienced excruciating headaches close to every day. The pain was so bad in my head that it made me nauseous. My head would feel like someone hit me in the head with a hammer and then impaled my head with a sword. I had a couple headaches that lasted for over a week without relief. Then the end of October came.... On Monday, October 23, 2017, I woke up feeling terrible. For no reason. Out of no where. Again. I violently threw up that morning. I was shocked. It came out of the blue. The next day, I didn't feel too much better, but I didn't throw up...or at least I was able to fight it that day. Wednesday, I was not so lucky to be able to do that. This was the worst day. I projectile vomited everything out of my stomach. The vomiting was so violent, I pulled a muscle in my stomach retching so hard, and I felt internal pain inside my stomach while I was getting sick and then afterwards. I felt dreadful. There were several other occurrences until the end of the semester, which was the worst possible time for me to get so sick. My illness cost me better grades for the Fall semester of 2017. As of currently (the beginning of 2018), I have been doing okay for the most part. I'm not at all hopeful that the illness is gone for good--only dormant. It's never gone for good. The puke monster is always there, waiting to catch me off guard.
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AuthorBrittany Seidelman Archives
April 2018
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