One paper down, one to go, then some finals and a portfolio.

Going to start the paper tonight since it's due tomorrow night at midnight, but waiting for my coffee to get here via the lovely S.

Last night something weird happened to me.

This is the closest thing I could find to my experience, and it took a lot of sifting to even find that.
I don't know if this is what it was or not. I don't have health insurance so I can't find out until a) I have another "attack" and someone is smart enough to take me to ER or b) I have another attack and have health insurance and can go get checked out. Any residual traces of activity in my brain are gone now, and my memory is restored so there's really nothing that can be done at this point.

It wasn't fun. I was sitting at the computer, had just finished chatting with a friend on AIM, and was about to start my school work. Yesterday I was running on four hours of sleep because of insomnia the night before and had finished writing a paper earlier in the day, but I finished ahead of time, got it edited and turned in, and was sitting down to write two more discussion post entries for one of my online classes. I wasn't stressed, my stress level hadn't really been high at all except during the insomnia, and even then it wasn't what I would call bad.

I've blanked out before, once in 2009 right before a final. I always associated it with panic attacks, but after studying those symptoms last night, I don't know that they could really be called that. Yes, stress was a factor in 2009, but it wasn't this time. The first time I blanked out, there was also a lot of stress and anxiety following because the final was -that day-, and I made my then boyfriend read the first chapter of The Fellowship of the Ring to me to try to make the memories come back.

Both times it has been a feeling of losing everything all at once, or completely blanking out. The first time the stress gradually got worse and worse until something snapped and suddenly everything was all gone. This time I was just sitting at the computer completely relaxed, then there is some time in between in which I don't remember anything but I guess time must have passed, and then I was sitting at the computer wondering why I was there and what I had done that day and what I had done the day before and what had to be done the next day and why was I at my mom's house and why were any of us there and what had we all been doing. It was just all gone. I remember asking my mom all of those questions and some other ones and I just kept repeating the same ones. I went downstairs and sat on my mom's bed waiting for everything to come back because there was too much noise and stimulation upstairs and called S and let him know what was happening. I said some random stuff to him too, things I wouldn't normally say, and was repetitive. I checked my texts today that I had sent him and they were overly simplified and very repetitive and all I could remember was that I had an assignment due in two days but I didn't know what it was and that I had to work a few hours this morning.

Losing your memory is a scary thing. I wasn't afraid like the first time because I knew that things would get better if I just waited a couple of hours, but I got kinda shaky when I was waiting for it to all pass.

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So took a nap today because I didn't really get to catch up on sleep today and am still trying to wake up enough to write. Drinking some crappy coffee.

One more week of this and then I can read and play video games and go outside. Climbin' on my excite bike.

Labels: amnesia, anxiety, finals, memory, memory loss, sleep deprivation, stress, studying, transient global amnesia