⇦ FOLLOW? ⇨

This was one thing I never thought I would get to experience today. The feeling of slipping away while fighting to remain conscious is terribly scary. Heat strokes are not meant to be melodramatic but the thoughts that ran through my mind were surreal.

I was scheduled to run my 2.4km run today. I took my 5 items 2 weeks prior, making today the deadline for the completion of all 6 items. I wasn't keen on forfeiting the results for the other 5 items so I was determined to run today. The weather was scorching hot and as I ran I felt my feet burning up and my body started to ache. Body aches are pretty normal but this ache was different. It wasn't due to fatigue but it was a lulling ache that I have been experiencing for the past few days, probably alerting me that 'something is wrong'. As anyone else would have done, I ignored the signs and continued running. Probably just another ache from not exercising for my entire life, basically.

I finished the run, heart pumping madly to circulate blood to my brain. It really felt like my brain was being pumped  with blood non stop like someone had screwed the hose into the gas tank of a car and started pumping petrol into an empty tank. My head was pounding unusually hard and I thought nothing of it until the pounding started to disorient me and I lost my sense of balance. While I was walking back to my class bench my feet felt like they were tangled and I nearly fell a few times. However, I was lucid enough to stop myself from falling flat by crossing my foot over the other or by supporting myself against a pillar.

I was tired. Very exhausted. My vision started to blur and I saw my class bench across from the central plaza. The quickest way to get to my class bench was to cross the central plaza, but under the scorching heat. As the wave of light and heat hit me it was like a blow to my skull. It felt as if someone had playfully slammed a book on my head but with triple the force. I struggled to stay awake as I shuffled to the class bench. When I reached the class bench I crashed.

As my head was propped on my arm, head still pounding, I could hear people talking around me but I didn't have the strength to react if I wanted to. I would slip into phases of consciousness as the headache got worse and I started to sweat profusely. I could feel the heat that my body was giving off and I wanted so bad to get up and get a drink but I stayed glued to the class bench. Right now my head was like an anvil and my body felt like fabric. I couldn't get up and I could feel some of my friends shaking me gently or calling me but I couldn't respond. I was trying so hard to give a response but it either came out as a groan or when I did manage to wake up the head rush would come back and I would collapse back onto the bench.

I probably have the best class ever. Joyce woke me up and brought me to the toilet so I could douse my face with water to cool me down. Walking never felt so hard, my legs were stiff and it was hard to keep my sense of balance in check. Thankfully washing my face helped to bring down the temperature and my face reverted from beetroot red to normal. Jia Rui constantly tried to keep me awake and bought an isotonic drink for me, making me drink a few sips every once in a while. I tried very hard to respond to her nudges or calls and I am so thankful that she was really patient to wait for an audible response from me.

Then I felt small gusts of wind blowing in my direction and I knew, from the voice, that Cho was fanning me with something to improve the ventilation. She kept fanning and kept me company for a while. I heard a lot of voices around me asking if I was ok or providing suggestions as to how to help me. It was a very touching moment and my class is just a bunch of sweethearts, really.

After about nearly an hour I manage to regain enough consciousness to change out of my pe attire as the A Level biology spa was a few hours later. Another thing I am so incredibly thankful for is that my body manage to persevere until the end of bio spa when we were packing up. Before that I was generally lucid and able to think clearly, which helped a great deal during the spa. While packing up that head rush hit me like a bulldozer and I couldn't take it much longer. I decided to go home as I didn't think I would be able to go for music lesson thereafter.

What scared me the most was how I kept slipping from consciousness while I was...semi-conscious back in my bench. I didn't know what was going on but Cho told me my eyes were twitching badly and my eyelids were fluttering. I couldn't feel anything so I was unaware of what was happening to me although i could still make out voices around me but all I could hear were fragments of sound. There were moments when I felt like letting go and let myself crash but I told myself to keep awake because I know if I let go I don't know if I will ever have the strength to come back to reality.

Now I'm feeling better, my head still hurts a little but it was nothing compared to the raging headache I had back in school. It dawned on me how easily I could have injured myself really badly or even lost my life if I decided to let go or if my friends were not there to give me as much assistance as they could. I'm very happy to be alive and well now.

I'm an unbelievably lucky girl.