The importance of taking care of yourself

Hi everyone. First off, sorry for being MIA for so long recently. I've been very busy with job interviews, work etc. Anyway, I've been running around like a headless chicken recently, trying to do a billion things at once, working all hours and generally pushing myself a little too hard. It all came to ahead at the beginning of this week when I had 2 final-round job interviews booked in, one of which I had to do a presentation for and the other of which I had to do a written test for (among other things). I spend the whole weekend prepping for the interviews, even though I felt exhausted and knew I should have taken more time to sleep and rest. By the Sunday evening, I had a slight pain in my mouth, around one of my widom teeth on the left hand side. I sometimes get a slight wisdom tooth infection when I'm run down, so I didn't let it bother me too much. I went in for my job intervew the next morning but by the evening (Monday) the whole left side of my face had swollen up horribly and I was in excrutiating pain. I had to give the presentation for the next interview at 10am the next morning. My doctor gave me antibiotics and I went to bed hoping I would wake up better. I woke up worse. But I went to the interview anyway. I did the presentation and felt it went ok under the circumstances. After it was over, I booked myself in for an emergency dental appointment as my doctor had advise. I felt tremendous relief to be able to focus on getting better instead of on interviews. Then, just as I crawled into bed, I got a call from the interviewers. they'd liked my presentation, but still weren't sure - they wanted me to come in for another interview on Thursday. I could have cried (actually I did). How could I possibly prepare for a job interview when I was in this much pain! Anyway, when I dragged myself into the dentist, he made me realise that the problem was a lot more serious than I had acknowledged. The infection in the tooth was aggressive, had spread and wasn't responding to the antibiotics I was taking. He wanted me to have an operation to remove the tooth and drain the infection as early as possible and then I'd have to stay in over night to have antibiotics via a drip. I told him I couldn't because of the interview. Fortunately, he made me see sense. I had to cancel the interview. It was a disappointment, but a lesson too. Pushing yourself beyond your personal limits is ultimately self-defeating. You have to make your health your first priority in everything because without it you can't even strive to achieve anything, let alone succeed.