Work/ School Balance

I have been in college since the fall of 2020 and never in that time have I ever contacted a teacher and told them my assignment would be late. I’ve been through near pneumonia, Covid, my grandmother’s death, sleepless nights, and many other things in the past few years. But I’ve never had to contact a teacher for an extension. I did on Friday.

I woke up with a horrible migraine after a stressful week at work and a trigger that I didn’t think triggered it because I was fine after it. I have had plenty of migraines in my life, cluster ones that last over a week, but I can still function. I can still get my assignments in on time. But this one was the monster of all migraines.

Friday I went into work asking a few people if they could cover me, but I knew I’d be okay to manage if I had to. Well, I had one person on vacation, my boss on vacation, and my store manager off. It was a stressful day. I took my migraine medication before going in and some Tylenol. The nausea was gone at least. My head was so bad I couldn’t concentrate.

Before lunch, I had a major part of the computer system break and a mini breakdown. That made my head feel better at least. I was in tears and trying to hold it together. I was trying to answer phones, help customers, work on putting the order away, and fill prescriptions. For most people that would be enough to draw tears. Normally I can handle it, but add in a drill to the side of the head and slight nausea and I was past my limit. I was told I needed to take a break and calm down. Nope. I had to get the computers fixed. That was my break. And I did and I felt better after, I think because I could focus on one thing and nothing else while getting them fixed.

I managed to eat a little at lunch and about an hour later the pain shifted to my ear. So my ear felt like it was going to explode and my head felt like a knife was stabbing into it. It was wonderful.

By the time closing time came around I was ready to leave and climb in bed with another migraine pill. A combination of medications was recommended with my migraine pill and I managed to do that while emailing the teacher. There was no way I was going to survive staring at a computer and typing something that anyone could understand. That morning I’d spent 10 minutes looking for a prescription bag of medication that was still sitting in the pharmacy and you want me to think? That wasn’t happening.

I still can’t believe I could write project proposals with Covid and a final project for school when my grandmother died, but I couldn’t manage typing discussion posts with a migraine. But, thankfully, my teacher was great and gave me a one-day extension. I woke up yesterday with my normal residual headache that will go away in a few days and I can function with that. Everyone is back to work tomorrow so it’ll be business as usual.