Day Four.
The human innate ability to adapt is likely limitless. We are good at adapting to our situations, whatever it be. The brain is good at that. But does that ability to adapt have limits? Is there a point when our brains just decide that they are having none of this hardship and just quit, leaving us to suffer whatever it is that we have failed to adapt to?
I’m asking because, it seems my brain has gotten to this point. I have learned to adapt to working seventy-two hours at a stretch, I have adapted to running on less than 4 hours of uninterrupted sleep and still giving some version of my best to those I work with. I’ve had to finish my whole anatomy syllabus, in my “Keith Moore” in just 7 days, and I’ve read my “Kumar and Clark” as though its a novel. Don’t bother with these names, they are simply medical jargons. I’ve had to work three jobs simultaneously, at a time when I conveniently oscillated from being a doctor, to being a patient and then a visiting-patient relative and I! did ! not ! crack !.
My point is, I’ve adapted to hard conditions. My brain is very capable.
Why then, is my head finding it hard to adapt to rest? To temporary restriction in my movement?
Being forced to sit in the house and just catch my breath is not necessarily a bad thing. I’ve been able to catch up on sleep and on praying and some studies. I don’t even go out so much to be honest. If you told me to go outside now, I would have no idea where to go, other than the gym, grocery store or window shopping.
So why, just why, is my head making a big deal of having to stay at home for just 10 days? Is it merely the fact that I know that I am being restricted? or is it the human tendency to resist being governed?
Why is every indoor chore now seeming dull and dreary? I remember when I was working, I used to want to take days off to rest, I used to dream of saving a ridiculous amount of money up so that I could afford to go on a gap-year to explore the world.
Why then am I now tired of everything including eating and why is my head aching from inactivity?
Day Five
I’m seated in the dining hall, the one for senior secondary school students. There are 3 rows in the hall, each containing about 40 seats. Each seat can accommodate 4 people but I’m seated with just one seat mate and we are probably on the 26th chair on the row. I don’t know what it is that we are gathered here to do since we are evidently not eating, I just know that some of my classmates are walking up and down pretending to be coordinating us in our seating position.
Does that even make sense?
All doesn’t feel well. My joints continue to pop everywhere. They ache too. My head feels heavy and I don’t know what to do. I look beside my left to the face of the person seating with me and I realize I don’t know her, she doesn’t even feel familiar. Then I look away and face the ground, thinking hard as to why I’m in that room in the first place and why it is that we are not allowed to leave the dining hall.
Beside my foot, I notice a styrofoam-disposable self-closing-pack inside a nylon bag, I don’t need to think too far to know that it’s empty, although I don’t remember why it is there or why I think it is mine.My chest starts to feel warm, more like heat is ascending through it, making way towards my head and every strength in my aching joint starts to ache. I belge once, expecting air to come out, but instead, I’m greeted with my own vomit. The food I don’t remember eating has made an appearance in my mouth and now in my hands. So I tear two sheets of paper.
I place them on each other, cup them in the palm of my hands and throw up inside it. Throwing up is unlike me. I wrap the paper and before I can dispose it, I throw up a second time. Again, this is an unusual experience! When I’m sure I’m done throwing up, I get up to dispose it and walk up to someone that I identify as a collective guardian. I have the mind to explain to him that I need to get out of the building and some exception needs to be made for me because I am sick, but for some reason the memory of how that conversation went decides to elude me like a butterfly.
Some unknown amount of time passes and I find myself seating back on that seat for a second time. This time around, there are two more people on the seat and the space is not enough. I’m feeling choked, inconvenienced and very uncomfortable. And then I vomit again. This time around, it seems all of my bowels are intent on emptying themselves via the narrow orifice that is my mouth. I vomit and vomit and vomit again until I am quite sure I must have suffered an acute kidney injury.
Then I get up, damn the consequences and storm out of the dining hall. Aren’t dining halls supposed to be for eating? Why then has my experience been marked with food moving in the reverse order via my bowels?
I walk out using the back door and walk to the area we call the “reservoir” This basically is a long wall that contains a sequence of about sixteen to twenty functioning taps that dispense clean water. I approach one of the taps and rinse my mouth and my hands and also my head.
I feel so drained of life and in no time, I start to retch. I open my mouth attempting to allow the vomit one out but nothing comes forth, instead, my left shoulder starts to feel strangely cold. The kind of cold that makes me think I’m dreaming and may have been drooling onto my shoulders. So I open my eyes, with a start and realise I’m laid out on the couch, the couch in the living room where I am serving my isolation sentence.
Damn.
I’m still here.
My brain is not having any more of it and is now conjuring nightmares to haunt me.
And it is merely day 5.
Sweet Jesus.
Rescue me.
