Overwork and the consequences

Yesterday’s post came late in the day, but it wasn’t because I was busy or even because I was hard at work. The truth is I was hard at rest. After two weeks of rushing, working, prepping, and basically all the -ing you could think of, it was bound to happen. I needed a break and I was forced to take one, my only saving grace was that it was the weekend so it could happen, but it’s a good reminder that we all have limits.

A quick introduction since I haven’t done one in… forever now. I’m a fourth year PhD candidate in neuroengineering. We’re at the final countdown (hopefully) and next year (again, hopefully) I’ll graduate. I have my BS and MS in mechanical engineering, I’ve been a student for so very, very long. And I’m doing super cool (IMO), cutting edge research that I finally have had the chance to share (like yesterday). I also struggle with mental health issues, physical health issues, and not so fun reminder, with constant thoughts of suicide, but I’m here, I’m okay (as much as I can be), and thanks to all of you out there, I have grown an amazing support system.

That background is somewhat important, because over the last decade or so since I’ve been a student, I’ve learned that I have some serious limitations to what I can and cannot do. My mental and physical health are very fragile and even though I’m still young…ish? I feel twice my age most times and have the health problems of someone three times my age. It’s not a great life, but it’s mine and I’ve come to accept it and acceptance is the first step to something or another. So it goes.

For the past two weeks we’ve been doing some really interesting experiments, like seriously interesting, nature paper worthy (hopefully) experiments. Hospital-PI has been teasing me because I am 98% confident it’s nature worthy, but we’ll see. For those not in academia, nature is like the top journal we could publish in, and it’s basically a popularity contest between journals and not a content contest, but they want stuff that will be cited and make a big splash. I’m hopeful we’ll hit it, but who knows?

The amount of work that went into these experiments is exhausting and I’m currently begging the hospital for about $50k to get some equipment to help, but it probably won’t happen until after the experiments are done and we write a grant for it. The major issue is that we’re using three different systems at the moment. Three, which triples the amount of work we need to do as well as the things that can go wrong. Oh boy, did things go wrong. But we got our data and things were looking good.

In all the adrenaline pumping activity going on in the past two weeks I’ve barely had a chance to take a break, because while these two experiments were “bonus” experiments to test out our equipment and make sure we were ready for the main event, we needed to put our best foot forward. It went well for the most part, but man was it exhausting. It just never really occurred to me how exhausting, because in all the excitement I had forgotten to just sit for a minute and not do anything. Which took a toll on me and, if you hadn’t noticed, my blogging habits, since I missed several days without even a sorry post.

That should’ve been my first clue something was wrong and in the future I’ll be more cautious. Sometimes these things sneak up on you and I was so focused on the finish line I forgot to even double check with my body to make sure it was still in one piece. Last Friday ended and besides being incredibly tired and just wanting to sleep, I felt nothing seriously wrong.

Then I woke the next morning to a brutal headache. I’m famous for my bad headaches, but this was one of the worst in a long time. So bad I had to take medication to help with the nausea because I was going to vomit if I didn’t. The day went by in a blur. I remember waking up, eating a late lunch, writing yesterday’s post, dinner, and sleep. I passed out in my living room for most of the day and before I knew it, it was evening. The only reason yesterday’s post even happened was because the headache went away and after sleeping for 8 or so hours during the day, I felt better. I still went to sleep uncharacteristically early for me and didn’t even bother turning on my alarm so I slept in (I have odd sleep patterns normally so I try to go to bed and wake up the same time daily regardless of weekend or weekday in case you’re wondering about the alarm).

Today I definitely feel the aches of the past two weeks that I didn’t notice, but all in all, I feel better. It’s an important reminder that I need to pay attention to those things though, especially as I am starting to collect data for my dissertation project. Besides this post, I’m not doing any sort of work today though, I’m probably going to catch up on some reading, maybe watch a movie, and just do nothing. Easier said than done, historically doing nothing stresses me out, but I’m doing it anyway.

The next few weeks should be “light” though so I’m grateful that I can get a break between now and when my dissertation data collections start in earnest. Which should be (hopefully!!) in a few weeks depending on when the equipment we ordered for the project arrives.

With that, I’m off to do some relaxing.