It was time for me to make my decision heard concerning school. I was more worried about my health then an education at this point. Besides, I'd already taken and passed all the academic classes I needed to graduate, all that was left were electives. But not very many people saw the logic behind my choice and it caused troubles.

There were only two factors influencing what I decided. The first was just how long it would take to get the credits from this blind school I and my teachers have been working on signing up for. The second was a bit more personal; if I had the same lunch hour as my girlfriend or not.

The reason for the first factor was simple. If I couldn't handle the classes at school, even on shortened days, I highly doubted I could handle the classes for the blind school too. I just didn't want to end up stuck longer than I first interpreted.

The second factor was not that hard to understand if you knew me. I could not see my girlfriend any other time besides school because our parents had a lack of transportation. More so, she meant so much to me, and I treasured getting to spend time with her. In fact, a year earlier during a dispute I was having at school with a substitute assistant, I was nearly ready to quit school because of it. But that would have also taken away my time with my girlfriend, so I ended up staying anyways.

I E-mailed my teacher telling her my choice, but she was out of town and didn't get my E-mail until right before school resumed. By that time, I had no choice but to go back, despite my conditions made. Naturally, I was bitter of the idea. However, I had some luck in that my lunch hour was the same as my girlfriend's. But by now, my back had gotten so bad that I still ended up missing three days in the first two weeks because I was hurting too much to sit up for school.

At the same time all this was happening with school, I had a lot of things at home going on. Physical therapy almost daily, a visiting nurse to monitor my health, and a social worker helping me with some legal issues with our landlord over getting wheelchair ramps built, all this kept me busy at home to the point I had no time to take much-needed daily naps like I had done previously right after school. In short, I just didn't have time to do everything now that I had to go back to school.

Homework was always late or incomplete, and I was always tired as could be at school. Worse yet, I was now staying until the end of the school day to ride the bus home, meaning I had to stay at school an extra hour. That not only made everything even harder, but I felt cheated out of a possible extra class credit. Instead of being in a class, I was doing homework while I waited for the end of the day. But in all fairness, I know I couldn't handle even more homework assignments from another class.

So it would happen, that fall I began to have problems with my heart; high blood pressure and irregular heart rate. I often had "collapses" at night and went to see my doctor because these collapses seemed awfully close to heart attacks. He checked and said they were anxiety attacks and prescribed an anti-depressant. This made sense, because the current lifestyle I had left me hardly no time for fun. I'd spend most of my time either at school, sick, doing schoolwork, or contacting doctors and social workers. Either way I did things, I ended up paying for. If I spent time enough to relax and calm myself, I fell behind in school and social work. If I spent all my time in school, I'd be up past midnight and sore and tired the next day. I just couldn't seem to come out ahead either way. But tried on I did.