... continued from
At the beginning of sophomore year, I went back to school, excited to move into an apartment with friends, and mentally left behind freshman year and what I thought would be the worst flare up I would ever experience.
But the thing with a chronic condition is that no matter how bad it seems to get, it can stunningly get worse. Over the course of my college career, the situation would deteriorate each semester and I felt like I was in my own version of Groundhog Day. Being the budding economist that I was, I drew a pseudo-graph of my life and deduced that my life seemed to repeat in cycles of 4 months: Month 1, Good. Month 2, Bad. Month 3, Really Bad. Month 4, Crash - Recuperate. Each subsequent cycle a tad bit worse. I don’t know how I got through those 3 years - I just did. In that sophomore year, I was introduced to relatives of UC. From my apartment, the walk to my econ discussion was 20 minutes uphill, if I speed-walked like a champion. By the time I would rush into class having just finished my paper cup of Honey Bunches of Oats on the way, my body felt like it would fold into my lower back and my heels would be on fire – this, I later found out, from a form of arthritis, a complication of UC, which is systemic in nature. A month in, when I discovered a magic school bus, 2 blocks from my apartment, that dropped me directly in front of econ discussion, I felt like breaking into a rousing original rendition of She’ll Be Coming around the Econ Hill When She Comes… and I felt like I was 18 going on 80. My life plan of becoming like Jennifer Aniston, a fabulous 40 year old going on 20, was not going according to schedule.
At the beginning of sophomore year, I went back to school, excited to move into an apartment with friends, and mentally left behind freshman year and what I thought would be the worst flare up I would ever experience.
But the thing with a chronic condition is that no matter how bad it seems to get, it can stunningly get worse. Over the course of my college career, the situation would deteriorate each semester and I felt like I was in my own version of Groundhog Day. Being the budding economist that I was, I drew a pseudo-graph of my life and deduced that my life seemed to repeat in cycles of 4 months: Month 1, Good. Month 2, Bad. Month 3, Really Bad. Month 4, Crash - Recuperate. Each subsequent cycle a tad bit worse. I don’t know how I got through those 3 years - I just did. In that sophomore year, I was introduced to relatives of UC. From my apartment, the walk to my econ discussion was 20 minutes uphill, if I speed-walked like a champion. By the time I would rush into class having just finished my paper cup of Honey Bunches of Oats on the way, my body felt like it would fold into my lower back and my heels would be on fire – this, I later found out, from a form of arthritis, a complication of UC, which is systemic in nature. A month in, when I discovered a magic school bus, 2 blocks from my apartment, that dropped me directly in front of econ discussion, I felt like breaking into a rousing original rendition of She’ll Be Coming around the Econ Hill When She Comes… and I felt like I was 18 going on 80. My life plan of becoming like Jennifer Aniston, a fabulous 40 year old going on 20, was not going according to schedule.
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Generally for exams, they tell you to eat a good breakfast prior. My 'strategy' was a little different. Before exams, I wouldn’t eat for at least a day (a common UC tactic but don’t try this at home – or really in any setting) just so hopefully I could get through a 1 or 3 hour exam without debilitating pain or bathroom trips (which could easily become lengthy vacations that I could not afford during an exam). Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. And believe it or not, I did still gain the freshman 15! A cushion that I ended up needing later in sophomore year for my 1st failed attempt at SCD.
