When I first heard this line, I was stunned for a while. I haven’t seen LC for 2 weeks. She was abroad for a conference while I was out of town for mine. I finally saw her yesterday. I noticed her wound at her forehead.

“What happened to you?”, I asked worriedly.

“Few days ago, I suddenly lost my eyesight completely without any sign while doing some work in the kitchen. I was extremely panicking and screened for help. In the midst of the screaming for help, I lost control of myself and knocked on something. Shortly after that, I passed out. The next thing I realized I was still “blind” lying on the bed.”

“Oh my gosh, how did it happen? What did the doctors say?”

“My mind’s still unclear. I don’t know how I ended up on the bed and why I was blind suddenly. I couldn’t even remember how I was transported from the bed at home to the ER.”

“The doctors went through a thorough scan of the brain and stuff. They couldn’t see anything from the CT scan and other tests.”

“In that case, I’d probably take it as good news. But what made you blind and fainted?”

“The doctors thought that it has something to do with my migraine I have been having lately, which affected the blood vessels flow in the brain. My immunity’s weaken as of late due to stress from work. But funny it is, I didn’t ever feel that I was that stressed. But the doctors noted to me that sometimes we didn’t realize that we’re bearing stress. By the time we know our stressful level, something severe already happens.”

LC’s voice’s trembled while she’s describing the whole incident to me. She looked pale too. Poor girl, I know she’s been really working hard for her mid-degree exam for today. Yep, in a few hours’ time, she’ll have to be examined by a panel of thesis committee. And the horrible thing is she was just discharged from the hospital 2 days ago!

“I was hospitalized. I was sharing the same room with some psychiatric patients. The feeling’s extremely awful. I was so scared and thinking what might happen to me. Was I going to die?”

“Oh dear, luckily you’re all right now. Try not to be too stressed for tomorrow.”

“I know. What matters more than health right?”

LC’s incident serves as a warning sign to us, you and me out there. We all know stress is harmful to us. Yet, what’s more scary and dangerous is, we tend to underestimate the unfelt stress. While we thought we are doing all fine, we might subconsciously being eaten by stress, trepidation or depression. These invisible bad guys can really do a lot of nasty stuff to us without us realizing.

I read somewhere recently and found this enlightening. Well it’s not astoundingly written, I’m sure you and I understand it but just not keeping it in mind. “No matter how bad the situation that you’re going through is, it can only be that bad because you’ve already hit the worst. Nothing can be worse than the worst.” With this in mind, there’s really nothing more important than our own health. So beware of those silent killers!

Many of us will be there to listen/support her oral examination presentation. I know LC is going to make it for her exam today. She knows her stuff. There’s no doubt about that. She rocks!