Almost two months ago I was playing a team version of minute to win it. One of the challenges was to spin a whole roll of toilet paper around myself. Now I'm a dancer, but after three minutes straight of spinning, I was dizzy. I slipped on some of the toilet paper. The floor, which had already been spinning, came towards my face as I went flying. My head connected with the edge of a wooden stair. I blacked out.
I woke up just a few seconds later, but I knew what had happened and nothing much seemed to be that matter, it didn't even hurt. At least it didn't hurt much right then. By the time I left the building, I couldn't walk steadily. I am a well balanced person normally due to all the dancing I do, but I was all over the place walking to my car. My head felt fuzzy. I drive myself home, but I know I was swerving all over the road. I walk inside and got some ice for my head. It was really starting to hurt and I felt almost as if I was confined inside the pain in my head, floating above the rest of my body.
My mom got home soon after. She looked at me, and asked what the ice was for. I told her what had happened. She promptly sent me to bed with instructions to wake her if I threw up. I woke up a couple hours later and ran down the hall to the bathroom. I was sick. I fell asleep on the floor waking up once more with a nasty surge in my throat. After that I went back to my room, to tired to make it down the stair to my mom's room. When my mom woke up the next morning I was asleep in an armchair with my niece who had been crying all morning. She asked me how my night had gone. When she heard the answer she called my doctor. An exam and a CT scan later, I had a huge aversion to light, I had seen a picture of my brain, and I had a doctors orders to stay in bed and do nothing but watch movies.
I was supposed to leave on an LDS mission six days later. I was on edge all week not knowing if they would let me go that week or not. I met with all my family and friends and said goodbye on sunday, still unsure if I was leaving that week. Monday I had a plethora of visitors wishing me well and preventing me from resting from a particularly nasty headache. Tuesday dawned and I forced tylenol and IBUprofen into my system as fast as was safe. The headaches were better, enough so that I was able to pack that day. The next day, again loaded on pain relievers, I entered the MTC optimistic of my condition. Far too much so. The next day the headaches were back in force. Friday I was refered, or rather ordered, to the MTC medical clinic. They referred me to a clinic at the Provo hospital that frequently dealt with concussions.
We made an appointment for Tuesday. By the time Sunday rolled around I was so dizzy and nauseous that I was unable to stomach any food. The pain of the headaches was waking me up frequently at night. Tuesday my vision started to flicker. I was terrified. We went to see the doctors and whilst talking to my mother they agreed that going home to recover might be the best option.
After many meetings with different leaders, it was decided. I would leave Wednesday or Thursday. We went back to the classroom and tried to continue the studies scheduled for that time. I looked down at the page and the words were moving and blurring. The lights started to throb and pulsate. Sound became muffled and then suddenly deafening. Then the first wave of pain hit. I thought the pain that had been waking me at night was bad, but it was nothing. Wave after wave of this awful pain slammed into my head. I couldn't see anything but flashing lights. Sounds were so loud they were unintelligible. All I understood was the pain. I started to cry, scream, beg for the pain to go away. I said no over and over again.
I felt like I was being poked and pulled. Yanked in several directions at once. I felt a strong stab of pain on the side of my skull soon replaced by a new wave of pain from inside my head. It felt like hours, or seconds later that I became aware of another young sister missionary talking to me, asking me questions. I answered in between waves. I was in another room. It had only been twenty minutes. I had walked part of the way out of the room supported by one of the young men that was in our classroom. He'd let go in the hall thinking I would support myself and I'd fallen into a wall. They had given me a blessing by the power and authority of the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob.
One of the other young men had ran across the MTC campus to the med clinic, and had run back carrying a wheelchair over his head, yelling at everyone to move. They carried me to the wheelchair since the only way out of the building was down a flight of stairs. All of the lights were too strong, noises too loud. Everything was echoing in my head. I was home in two hours.
I'm hoping to be able to go back soon, but words and pages still blur. This post has been written in parts. I have not had a day go by in which I had even a few moments of being headache free.
It all starts with 'Almost two months ago'.
