picking open old wounds... part 2
**WARNING** SAME AS BEFORE... It's long and personal so it's behind the cut.
Where I had last left off, I had just had the meeting regarding my housing situation and health status at UML.
For the rest of that summer I pretty much stayed in NH with Mum (mom #3), her Fiance and my "little brother". It was a great summer and mum helped me catch up on life. I had gotten my driver's license by this point and she would let me drive her Jeep a little bit. She also helped me open up my very first personal bank account where I was the sole signatory. The week before school, she took me shopping and we got bedding, easy to prep microwave food, and some basic supplies I would use for school. We packed up the Jeep and Mum, Seth and I headed down to move me in.
Move-in day went smoothly. I noticed I was one of the youngest people in my dorm and everyone else did too. Evidently you either got a single in Concordia because you had seniority in choosing, had super connections, or had a medical issue. It wasn't just me they isolated. A couple of the friends I made also had medical conditions that were slightly more obvious than mine.
School started out great. As apprehensive and alone as I felt about being 'the first/only one', I was actually starting to enjoy myself. My classes were awesome, and the my classmates seemed alright and I started getting involved in extracurriculars like the campus paper, the women's crew team, and at first even campus ministry. I had monthly checks as a result of being on SSDI and things were going along swimmingly until probably mid/late October.
I think I had probably worn my body down a little too much by jumping into rigorous crew practices (5-7am m-fri and 7-9 am sat) and staying up late doing homework. I was really starting to burn the candle at both ends. Especially since I had gone from not exercising at all really except on Fridays in high school to exercising almost every day first thing in the morning I think I really through my body into shock. I came down with a mild fever a slight sore throat one night and decided to miss class the next morning to go to campus health. They sent me all the way to Boston because they just wanted to be sure it wasn't something more. That was more the beginning of the end for me. It was an hour + to get to Boston through public transportation and during that time of year when it was already nasty and cold out. When I wasn't feeling well to begin with, the last thing I wanted to do was traipse through all of that.
I stuck through it and missed classes when I was *really* sick. I had stopped going to crew because I wasn't healthy enough for a long enough period of time to really dedicate myself to it. By November I had become really sick with a high fever, cough, sore throat, sweats, etc. It was bad enough that I went into Boston because I was afraid I had pneumonia. As it turned out I didn't have pneumonia but I had somehow gotten a virus. I went home for Thanksgiving break early since I couldn't go to classes anyhow, and got better. I came back to school but was in such a low morale that I had pretty much given up on my classes by this point. I finished the semester and was placed on academic probation due to low marks in my classes that were mostly related to absences. I could have appealed it and gotten a doctor's note to cover all of my absences but I was really ashamed that I wasn't able to hack it. I mean, my team at Children's Hospital was so proud of me because I was their first perinatal patient to be healthy/smart enough to go to college. How could I let them down by missing my classes?
I didn't tell anyone about the probation and went to Costa Rica over winter break.
I came back to school refreshed and ready to bear down my second term. I even picked up Spanish as my minor and tested out of the first three years of spanish right into a Practicum doing field work. I was super excited about that. It wasn't meant to last though. Within a month of being back, I started getting sick again. This time, it started out with the first real asthma attacks that I've *ever* had in my life. Looking back, I can clearly see that it was sick building syndrome. I was fine outside in the single digit temperatures, fine in my classes, and even fine in other parts of the building but I would walk into my room and almost instantly start coughing and hacking and gasping for breath as I could feel my air passages closing up. I started using my inhaler regularly (before I only used it 'as needed' which was virtually never) and probably after a few weeks, things started getting better.
I was stuck in a cycle though, so that wouldn't last long...
Conclusion of my time at UML in the next post.
Where I had last left off, I had just had the meeting regarding my housing situation and health status at UML.
For the rest of that summer I pretty much stayed in NH with Mum (mom #3), her Fiance and my "little brother". It was a great summer and mum helped me catch up on life. I had gotten my driver's license by this point and she would let me drive her Jeep a little bit. She also helped me open up my very first personal bank account where I was the sole signatory. The week before school, she took me shopping and we got bedding, easy to prep microwave food, and some basic supplies I would use for school. We packed up the Jeep and Mum, Seth and I headed down to move me in.
Move-in day went smoothly. I noticed I was one of the youngest people in my dorm and everyone else did too. Evidently you either got a single in Concordia because you had seniority in choosing, had super connections, or had a medical issue. It wasn't just me they isolated. A couple of the friends I made also had medical conditions that were slightly more obvious than mine.
School started out great. As apprehensive and alone as I felt about being 'the first/only one', I was actually starting to enjoy myself. My classes were awesome, and the my classmates seemed alright and I started getting involved in extracurriculars like the campus paper, the women's crew team, and at first even campus ministry. I had monthly checks as a result of being on SSDI and things were going along swimmingly until probably mid/late October.
I think I had probably worn my body down a little too much by jumping into rigorous crew practices (5-7am m-fri and 7-9 am sat) and staying up late doing homework. I was really starting to burn the candle at both ends. Especially since I had gone from not exercising at all really except on Fridays in high school to exercising almost every day first thing in the morning I think I really through my body into shock. I came down with a mild fever a slight sore throat one night and decided to miss class the next morning to go to campus health. They sent me all the way to Boston because they just wanted to be sure it wasn't something more. That was more the beginning of the end for me. It was an hour + to get to Boston through public transportation and during that time of year when it was already nasty and cold out. When I wasn't feeling well to begin with, the last thing I wanted to do was traipse through all of that.
I stuck through it and missed classes when I was *really* sick. I had stopped going to crew because I wasn't healthy enough for a long enough period of time to really dedicate myself to it. By November I had become really sick with a high fever, cough, sore throat, sweats, etc. It was bad enough that I went into Boston because I was afraid I had pneumonia. As it turned out I didn't have pneumonia but I had somehow gotten a virus. I went home for Thanksgiving break early since I couldn't go to classes anyhow, and got better. I came back to school but was in such a low morale that I had pretty much given up on my classes by this point. I finished the semester and was placed on academic probation due to low marks in my classes that were mostly related to absences. I could have appealed it and gotten a doctor's note to cover all of my absences but I was really ashamed that I wasn't able to hack it. I mean, my team at Children's Hospital was so proud of me because I was their first perinatal patient to be healthy/smart enough to go to college. How could I let them down by missing my classes?
I didn't tell anyone about the probation and went to Costa Rica over winter break.
I came back to school refreshed and ready to bear down my second term. I even picked up Spanish as my minor and tested out of the first three years of spanish right into a Practicum doing field work. I was super excited about that. It wasn't meant to last though. Within a month of being back, I started getting sick again. This time, it started out with the first real asthma attacks that I've *ever* had in my life. Looking back, I can clearly see that it was sick building syndrome. I was fine outside in the single digit temperatures, fine in my classes, and even fine in other parts of the building but I would walk into my room and almost instantly start coughing and hacking and gasping for breath as I could feel my air passages closing up. I started using my inhaler regularly (before I only used it 'as needed' which was virtually never) and probably after a few weeks, things started getting better.
I was stuck in a cycle though, so that wouldn't last long...
Conclusion of my time at UML in the next post.