Lessons Learned… Alcohol + Clumsiness = Concussions

Hai guys! *waves* Sorry for being MIA the past month or so, my life has been a hot mess. I’ll get into the insanity that is being a harp performance major at Chapman in a separate post, but the main reason I’ve been MIA is because on top of the general insanity of it all I didn’t have a laptop. I am pretty much only home to shower and sleep these days (unless its the weekend, but even then those days are starting to fill up with performances and gigs) so when I’m home the last thing I want to do is hop on my desktop and write a post. I do have some good news though! I am now the proud owner of a MacBook Pro (thank you student loans!) so I am going to do my best to keep up with blogging again, even if it’s only a couple times per week. I guess we’ll see how well that works out :P

So anyways, let me share a super fun story with you all that happened 3 weeks ago yesterday. Are you ready? Okay good because I’ve got another Lessons Learned… post for ya!

Right before I started my 8th week of school I ended up having a not-so-proud moment. I’d like to call it one of those “Kate, you’re old enough to know not to do this” moments. So, what happened? Mr. Envoy and I had Jessicat and her boyfriend over to hang out, and I had had an extremely stressful week with learning new music and then having rehearsal for the new music so I ended up drinking. Well… I’m sure you can already see where this is going, but it’s slightly worse than what you’d imagine. Remember when I said that Murphy’s Law was my BFF? Yep, wasn’t kidding.

The four of us were playing Cards Against Humanity and eating the smores dip that I had made, and I decided to start having some vodka. Well… by the time the pizza we ordered came I was sick to my stomach from too much alcohol and not enough food (good job self, good job), so I got up to go hang out in the bathroom for a bit when somehow… I fell. Mr. Envoy said that he had looked away from me for one second when he heard a thud and looked up to see me laying flat on my back. I don’t remember what happened other than I was walking and then I hit my head and was on the ground. Mr. Envoy wanted to rush me to the ER because he was really worried but I was far too sick to leave the bathroom so I talked him into letting me stay at home while simultaneously cursing his lack of hair skills (he was attempting to put my hair into a ponytail so I wouldn’t throw up all over my hair and failing miserably) and apparently telling him that we could never have any daughters someday because he was horrible at doing hair. Yep, definitely sounds like me.

Mr. Envoy forced me to stay up for a couple hours, which was fine because I wasn’t in a state to leave the bathroom anyways. When my stomach finally calmed down I slept fitfully because my head hurt so bad; I had a nasty knot on the back of it so it was hard to get comfortable in bed. I woke up twice in the middle of the night and had an incredibly difficult time walking without stumbling or swerving into a wall, so when I woke up for the last time around 5 to everything in the room spinning like I was on a super-speed merry-go-round I asked Mr. Envoy if we could go to the ER to make sure things were okay because man oh man did my head hurt. Plus all the spinning really didn’t feel good.

So off we went to the ER at the Naval Hospital on base early that Sunday morning. We were the only people there other than the staff, so I was seen pretty quickly. It was pretty awkward having to explain how exactly I ended up falling and hitting my head in the first place, but thankfully other than me feeling embarrassed and having my head pounding, everything seemed fine neurologically speaking – but I had given myself a small concussion. They prescribed me pain pills and anti-nausea pills and then sent me back home with instructions to contact my PCM (primary care manager, aka doctor) for a follow up appointment.

I spent the rest of the day sleeping or laying in bed because my head kept getting really dizzy. I ended up missing class that Monday after hitting my head because my whole world spun if I moved my head the wrong way and I didn’t want to risk driving, let alone getting a spinn-y head near while the train was pulling up and falling in front of the train or something. I made an appointment for Tuesday morning with my PCM because I felt like the dizziness was getting worse instead of better, and I also called my sisters to let them know what happened. One of them suggested that I ask my doctor about Vertigo since it runs in the family, which is when it clicked that on top of a small concussion I also got a nasty case of vertigo. I still don’t know if falling and hitting my head is what brought it on or if it was just really unfortunate timing, but on Tuesday morning my doctor confirmed that it certainly sounded like I had a bad case of vertigo… and even more unfortunately the only thing to really do was to wait for it go away.

I slept and watched a lot of Netflix. I ended up missing an entire week’s worth of harp and piano practice, and I also ended up missing my PreCalculus midterm because of it. I ended up finally being able to go back to school the Friday after hitting my head (almost 1 week after the fact), but I realized after driving to the train station that I was far from 100% better. When I got out of my car at the train station my head spun again, but not nearly as bad as before, so I got on the train and headed for school. That morning was the first time I had touched the harp in a week, and my hands refused to work correctly while playing. I know it was mostly because I hadn’t practiced in a week, but my brain felt sluggish and like it was disconnected from my hands. Thankfully I only had one class that day, but looking back and forth between my notes and the powerpoint caused more head spinning, and on top of it my hands were still sluggish and didn’t want to move quickly enough to take notes in a timely manner.

I had planned that day to catch the last train home (which would get me home a little before midnight) so that I could see the opera performance at my school. Unfortunately after practice hours, class, and then working for 4 hours on campus I was wiped out so I caught a train home instead so I could get home and rest up for a hectic following week of catching up with classes and practicing.

I know that I’ve mentioned that I can’t make up some of the things that happen to me, and this story is just another one of those things. Yesterday marked 3 weeks since I fell and hit my head, and although my head no longer hurts and the vertigo is almost all gone I still have a damn knot on the back of my head. My doctor thought it was really strange that it was still there, but all I can do is to “keep an eye on it”. The good news is that my hands and brain are back to their normal operating speeds which is good because I have a lot of performances and gigs coming up this month and next month so I have a lot of music to learn!

So, as my dad asked me after I first told him about me falling and hitting my head: “What did you learn from this?” Well, I learned that I really need to eat more than just smores dip the next time I drink anything! Although I think I’ll be keeping my distance from vodka for a bit. *shudders*

Do you have any stories involving alcohol and falling? Or even just stories involving too much alcohol? If you do, please let me know in the comments; let’s all share in the embarrassment that can be life at times! ;)

<3 and harp strings,
Kate