What Was Your Hardest Year And Why? Pt I

Name: Dr. Indira C. Turney

Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience from Pennsylvania State University

IG Name: @indiraturney

One of my hardest years in graduate school was my second. I vacationed in Dominica during a year that the Chikungunya virus was rampant throughout the Caribbean and ended up contracting it. My symptoms included the typical rash, fever, crippling pain, and musculoskeletal tissue inflammation for about a week. I returned to the US shortly after. I scheduled a medical appointment for the day after I returned from vacation because I still had some joint pain and swelling. The doctors had no idea what to do. I was their first patient with Chikungunya, so they only prescribed anti-inflammatory meds and a referral to a chiropractor for the joint pains. The semester from hell started! What made this semester even harder was that I had to prepare stimulus and pilot experiments for my master’s thesis project. I spent long days in the lab and slept very little. So, here I am, during one of the most stressful academic semesters with an illness triggered by stress! Ha! What a combination. I ended up seeing a chiropractor 3x a week and taking about 7 different pills daily to help with pain and inflammation. If it was going to be a cold day or about to rain, my body told me. That feeling reminded me of how my grandmother predicted the weather based on her arthritis pains. This condition later progressed to be a chronic occurrence where I experience debilitating and persisting joint pain whenever my stress levels rise. I eventually got a disability pass so that I could park close to my lab building—even walking was painful. Many suggested taking the semester off, but this was a critical time in my data collection process. Plus, this was a sign of giving up and being seen as too weak! So, I worked my body to painful spasms and emergency room visits for about 6 months. Emergency room visits were $250 each time. I kept this from most of my friends because obviously, this made no sense, but I knew what they would say, “Stop working yourself so hard.” I am big on finance management, so this is what eventually made me stop to think that I should take a different approach. I managed to defend my thesis at the end of the spring semester, which significantly reduced stress levels. The silver lining in all this was that I deepened my self-care practices. I developed accountability groups that helped me manage my stress levels through exercise & meditation. I also reduced my inflammatory food intake and scheduled more breaks/time off in my schedule. In the end, I learned that the work will ALWAYS be there; it made no sense to work that hard and be unable to enjoy the fruits of my labor because I was too sick. I learned that having a supportive community is critical. Beyond anything else, if I want to do phenomenal work, I must first take phenomenal care of myself!