Ugh, Why Did I Drink That Coffee?

My exams are ongoing. The weather here isn’t great right now - it’s monsoon season. Three days before my exam, I decided to treat myself to pizza and a cold drink. The next day, I woke up with a sore throat. This is usually a sign that I’m going to fall sick in a day or two. The problem was, I had the toughest exam of the bunch coming up, and now I had a sore throat. As the day went on, my body started aching, and so I decided to sleep it off for the rest of the day, hoping for the best.

I then woke up in the evening and had a nice hot cup of black coffee since it usually makes my throat feel a bit better. I didn’t have a fever or any other symptoms just yet, only slight body pain and a sore throat, even though the pain might be because of the gym session the day prior.

Having that coffee in the evening, that too right after waking up was a big, big mistake. Soon, I started feeling the chills, and a fever slowly kicked in. I didn’t have any medicine on me. As night fell, I felt freezing cold. I piled all the blankets on top of me but still didn’t feel the slightest bit of warmth. I tried to sleep, but just could not seem to. I felt too awful to use the phone, and slumber kept distancing itself further and further away from my grasp. The situation was dire.

I kept closing my eyes, thinking about whatever could distract me from this predicament up until midnight, getting up, moving a bit, and then trying to sleep again. After midnight, my brain started showing me old memories from its less-accessed bit of records. All the moments I normally couldn’t recall danced alive - from my early school days, games I played with friends in my childhood, the most random lectures I somehow still remember, school functions, how I used to go to Dad’s shop to play games, how I watched people play GTA, how I studied, how I did literally everything.

This happened every hour. I’d close my eyes and briefly think about stuff for almost an hour, then open my eyes, wait for 10 minutes, close my eyes and lose myself in my thoughts again. I wasn’t asleep; I was completely aware of that fact. The feeling was just so awful yet nostalgic. I remembered all the good and bad moments - words or teachings from people around me, times when someone got mad at me, embarrassing moments, proud moments, moments where I did bad things I shouldn’t have. Now I get why they say your life flashes before your eyes when you’re on the deathbed (I wasn’t dying but yes).

Around 3 or 4 in the morning, I realized I couldn’t sleep not because I was sick, but because I was stupid and had had coffee in the evening. This same thing had happened to me before - I once had cold coffee at night and couldn’t sleep the entire night; but this time, being sick in addition made it all much worse.

Around 5 or 6 come morn, I stopped feeling cold. I took my phone and started a YouTube video, wanting to watch it, but my eyes were not in the mood to cooperate, so I just listened. I listened to the entire video while awake, and then another hour-long podcast. After that, I finally started to feel a little sleepy and dozed off for about three hours.

I woke up feeling slightly better. I promised myself that I’d never again have coffee after noon. Now, I had an exam the next day, and as a proud engineering student, I didn’t study until the night before the exam. I took a nice hot shower - oh, and yes, I’d been taking cold showers since summer, which probably contributed to me getting sick.

Then I went to get medicine. At 2 in the noon, I slept again until evening, woke up, skipped studies, had dinner, and slept again, lol. I studied a bit in the morning, and guess what? The exam was super easy! The toughest exam’s question paper turned out to be easy, and I’ll pass it easily, haha!

And that was the story of my terrible, sleepless night—thanks to the combination of coffee and a misfortune sickness at the worst possible time.