Managing The Basics

I have been physically sick for the last 48 hours. Headache, sore throat, nausea, chills, dizziness, exhaustion. I have been living off of crackers and Gatorade.

Chris, Jessica’s husband, returned to the hospital this afternoon and took over “nursing duties” so that I could come home. I got home a few hours ago and immediately fell asleep. I napped for awhile and when I woke up I felt better. Not great, but better. I’m going back to work tomorrow and my plan is to get back on my meal plan then, if I’m feeling well enough. For the rest of tonight I’m going to keep pushing crackers and Gatorade, but hopefully tomorrow I’ll be up to eating full meals.

Jessica is obviously upholding her end of the bargain to get better, so I need to work like hell to uphold my end. I can’t keep going through life in this state of suspended animation, waiting to get better. I need to take the steps to get better, not just wait around and hope that “better” somehow finds me.

This whole situation has made me think about the brevity of life and what I want to get out of my time here on earth. Right now I am where I need to be given my physical and mental health. That said, I really don’t like where I am. Solution: improve my health so I can move on with life.

Move on where? This time last year I was going back to get two more BS degrees in nursing and dietetics. Dietetics still interests me and is a possibility (assuming I can get my own nutritional status stable), but I am leaning more and more towards med school. When I told my professors in the Chemistry and Geology departments I was back at JMU for nursing and dietetics, they all looked at me like I was nuts and said, “Anna, get your butt into med school now.”

If I do go the med school route, it will be at UVA. Emergency medicine or endocrinology.

Obviously I cannot be an orthopedist at UVA because I am 1) not male, 2) not African American, 3) not bald, and 4) not ridiculously good looking.