SOLVING THE HEALTH PUZZLE

I felt like I was going to collapse, the more I ran the more I could hear my heart beating in my chest. At first it sounded awkward, and then it became frightening. I knew I was going to pass out if I continued and so I decided to stop. To be honest It did not just start at the early hours of that friday morning, I noticed the little changes in my body, like how I slept early and had consistently been waking up very tired, or how I was constantly getting through my mornings with the caffeine from coffee I knew my body was already tired of. It wasn’t as though I did not know that caffeine usually makes me stay awake when I should be sleeping, but I felt I needed to work and continually took it regardless.

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I was tired of feeling the weakness, so I decided to start building my strength from my core. I thought a road walk was going to help. I have been doing it for over a year, although I stopped, because at one point I was not eating well. Being a student who only relied on himself as the only source of income wasn’t as brave as I made it look because even though I loved exercising, I knew that I was exercising on an empty stomach. When I think about it, perhaps all those times I exercised on an empty stomach added to the feeling I had that day. As much as that feeling made me cautious, it made me terrified as it was the first time my body was reacting like that to anything at all.

I thought stopping was going to make it all go away, but it didn’t, instead it increased, and became even scarier. I managed a walk back home, this time I wasn’t jogging at least, and immediately I went for a cold shower out of instinct. Somehow I knew my body needed to calm down, my heart especially needed to slow down and so I stayed in the bathroom for almost an hour allowing the water on my body to help repair the damage my negligence had cost. I have never needed to really go to the hospital in a very long time before that time, and even then the thought hadn’t even crossed my mind. My body had always found ways to heal itself and I was hoping that would happen again.

The next day I went to church, and the palpitations started again. I woke up still weak that morning but took a walk to church regardless. This time I had to get the attention of medical professionals who advised that I take a lot of rest and visit the hospital for real. Taking their advice I decided to really try visiting the hospital. After the doctor examined me asking how my day was, I bluntly started ranting about how my work is hectic and how I sometimes sleep off while working, taking pride (as usual) in the fact that I do not rest. The doctor asked if I normally wake up tired, and I replied yes stating that it’s because of how much I had to work the previous day.

Then the doctor asked when was the last time I woke up not feeling tired, and when I tried thinking about it, I could not remember. At this point I could already figure out that I caused everything I was going through, I developed a working habit without a rest habit and my body was just reacting. The doctor needed to run some tests to see how much damage had been done to my body, and when the result came out, it was clear that my immune system was low. Hearing the doctor read the result I wasn’t even surprised because I knew I hadn’t been eating well and when I ate it was usually junk. With everything that happened, it was clear I needed a new habit and at the time I did not even know where to start from.
The first thing I obviously did was to stop exercising. This wasn’t because it wasn’t good, but because my body did not need another exercise at that time. I also stopped taking caffeine, now understanding that although it kept me awake, it was doing more damage to my body. But the feeding issue was even more dire than I thought. It reminded me about why I stuck to junk for so long, it was cheap food. Cheap food was making me unhealthy, healthy food did not come cheap, I don’t like to cook so I must spend more on takeouts. This became my new problem, and solving it was looking like a big puzzle.

THIS IS MY ENTRY INTO THE INKWELL COMBINED WRITING PROMPT #37