I got a free massage all day at work. Of course, it also caused me to have a low
grade concussion, but that's another story entirely. Okay, no it's not.
The construction directly outside my classroom window causes
extremely loud, almost unbearable low-pitched noises, like a giant tuba
bellowing from the bowels of the earth. The machinery shakes the building so badly
that the floor, walls, doors, and desks are all shaking today for three and a
half straight hours. At one point I
stagger to the nurse's office with my two palms cupped in front of me,
muttering, "Drugs … headache … drugs … headache…" My eyeballs are literally (and I mean this
literally) rattling around in their sockets, causing extreme vertigo, nausea,
and an intense migraine-like stabbing in my brain.
 |
| (My windows are the three on the bottom right that you can barely see) |
By lunchtime, which arrives at 11:10, I have blurred vision,
ringing in my ears, severe vertigo, unsteady gait, and I feel like my brain is
trying to pull an Alien escape
between my eyes out of the bridge of my nose.
I have migraine-like symptoms that include sensitivity to light and
sound, and I am extremely irritable. I
can't concentrate and have to bring my work home later because I cannot
tolerate the vibrations of my work-day full-room massage.
Honest to god, I swear the construction and the violent
building shaking for sustained hours are giving me a concussion at the least
and a traumatic brain injury at most. My
neck hurts, like I've suffered whiplash, but it's probably from clenching all
of my muscles today in an attempt to keep my head from rolling off my shoulders
every time the giant bucket from the front-end loader hits the ground, adding
to the constant drilling and rock-shattering. At one point the staging collapses outside of
the windows. We don't bother to look to
see if any bodies hit the pavement; we figure if they're asinine enough to
climb staging while they are self-producing constant earthquakes, they deserve
to fall on their stupid heads.
I go back tomorrow and do it all over again. I'm thinking if I have another day of this,
I'll be hitting the nurse's office again. The eight ibuprofen she handed me today didn't
even touch the pain. I think I need
something stronger … like a sledge hammer.
Look, I have few enough brain cells as it is. I would appreciate it if the construction
crew didn't rob me of whatever might remain. When I joke about dying at my desk, I want it
to be caused by old age and not a sudden brain bleed. I'm just saying.
