I Overworked Myself to the Hospital

I have always regarded opportunities as rare. Having that mentality does not help in university and, honestly, even in life. I was good at what I did. I am an excellent developer (I study Computer Science). Once people started noticing the quality of my work and the value I charged, the demand for my work increased.

The demand made me happy, and I promised to work harder as people finally saw value in me which had never happened to me before. I started taking up more work than I could manage. I had a limit, but I took up enough work to lose sleep. University life was hard, and I started seeing it as a threat to my creative process. I started blaming my university for all the lost rest and missed meals when it was all my doing.

The work started taking a toll on my mental health. The thing with development work is there are no fixed hours as such. It easily seeps into your personal life. This was when I started realising this was not sustainable.

I started growing weak and having vertigo every time I got up after a long sitting session. This was odd, but I didn't pay much attention to it. I started taking medications without getting myself checked.

I could not even walk 30 minutes straight to classes with physical classes. I finally decided to get myself checked. After many checkups (which were treated as an emergency), the professionals told me that I had Iron-Deficiency Anaemia. My haemoglobin level had dropped down to 3.6. The doctors were surprised about how I was going about my day. It was highly likely to have had a cardiac arrest.

The ignorance of my health had finally caught up.