stay or go?

That is the age old question if you're a teacher who's feeling sick: Do I stay home and get some rest so I can recover from this? Or do I go in to work anyway?

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As teachers, we can sometimes believe that if we stay home and leave our students in the hands of an emergency substitute (no matter how good our sub lesson plans are), THE WORLD WILL END: chaos and mayhem everywhere! True or not, it can be a major hassle to be out sick.

I'm feeling under the weather. Not sick enough to stay home (no fever/stomach ache/headache) but coughing a lot, lethargic, and generally weak. So I soldiered on and went to school.

Today after a particularly loud sneeze of mine, "Brayden" asked: "Why you sneeze?"

"Because I'm sick."

"You should go home," he told me in all of his first grade wisdom.

"But if I go home, who will teach you?"

...

"The GYM teacher!"

There you have it, folks: next time I call in sick, I'll just tell the office to leave my students in P.E all day!

Maybe Next Time

Last night, sensing that there wasn't enough snow falling in order to produce a snow day, my body decided to take matters into its own hands, and made a rash decision to get sick in order to stay home.

First, it hurt to swallow. Then, my body started aching. Next, I only slept for a few hours last night as I lay in a pool of sweat, feeling nauseated. Finally, I started dry heaving after I woke up.

Checking the internet and realizing that my school would definitely be open today, I called my vice principal to tell her I was too sick to come into work today (that's our sick day procedure in our district) At 5:25 A.M, I had clearly woken her up.

VP: "What time is it?"
Me: "It's 5:25; I'm so sorry for waking you up!"
VP: "That's okay. I was really hoping we'd have a snow day today.... "

I'm disappointed too. It turns out that a sick day is MUCH less fun then a snow day!

Master List or Master of Lists

Despite my protesting body, I did drag myself to work today. I had two good reasons to do so:

1) I have work to do before the end of the school year (Friday)
2) If I had to stay cooped up in this house for one more day, I would have gone insane!! No, really.

And it's amazing what can get done when I don't see any kids! I crossed some major items off of my to-do list. It was a such a deeply satisfying feeling to check things off that list. I briefly considered making up another list full of things I've accomplished, just so I could cross off more items. But that would make me out to be crazy. And I'm not crazy... Crazy is when you write a list of all your lists so you can keep track of them all.

Yes, I'm talking about you Rebekah!

For Real

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Sick Days

Ever since I can remember, it's been very difficult for me to take sick days. I remember several times in high school, my dad would urge me to stay home and rest; usually I was too determined to give in. Sometimes it was that I thought I was going to miss out on something really fun at school if I stayed home. Sometimes I was sure that I would fail my next test if I didn't show up for class (can't really trust other note-takers, you know?). In college, taking a day off was unthinkable: most classes only met 1-3 times a week!

And now that I'm teaching, not much has changed. When I lived in California, I didn't like to stay home when I was sick because I had to make sub plans. And that was so much trouble. But then again, I didn't get all that sick in California. I'm sure it has something to do with all that sunshine and fresh air year round.

At my school here in Michigan, the policy is "crawl in, don't call in". In fact, we are officially given 0 sick days (they still pay us when we have to stay home due to sickness, but they don't give us a specified number of days so that we don't abuse it). So I have a lot of guilt when I stay home sick. And at my current job, I don't even need to make sub plans for when I'm gone because I'm not a classroom teacher!

But still I feel compelled to be at school when I am sick. The last time I was sick, I got up anyway and tried to get to work, only to turn around 10 miles into my commute when I realized I wasn't going to make it. And just this past Wednesday, I went in to work when I clearly shouldn't have. It was my colleagues in the special ed. department who urged me to go home. That was hard, because I felt that everyone else was judging me a wuss. On Wednesday, it was purely an upper respiratory issue that was making me feel miserable. But I threw up on Thursday. I kind of wanted to send out a mass e-mail to everyone to show that I was justified in staying home (but then decided against it). I've got to stop caring what other people think and just take care of myself, so that is why I'm taking today off too, to recuperate!!

Sick Thoughts

There's nothing like being sick to make you wish you could go back to work...

Die, Germs, Die!

A whole week has gone by since my last post. A sick week. A sneezy, coughing, tired week.

As I was laying in bed a few nights ago, tossing and turning in a futile attempt to get the right amount of air into my lungs, I started wondering why it was that I never got sick while teaching in California, and yet I haven't been at school for one month here, and I'm already hacking.

Here's what I came up with:

1) I don't have a classroom aide sanitizing every hard surface at the end of each and every day like I did in California.

2) Michigan schools are INSIDE. There are hallways connecting every room and every office!!! In good ol' CA, everything was open and OUTSIDE. You had to go from portable to portable to get anywhere. There was no place for germs to hide, unlike my new school where they gather at every opportunity, waiting for you to walk by so they can maim you.

Well, there's not a whole lot I can do about being cooped up inside all time, but I did decide to be more vigilant with the Clorox wipes. I used them today. It's the same kind my aide used to use, and it makes the whole room smell like my job in California.

It's a good smell.

A Note From The Lone Teacher

My aide won't be back until maybe next Monday, if she can get a medical release. Due to the impact of the door, she has a pinched nerve in her neck (similar to a type of whiplash) causing muscle tightness, inflammation in her shoulder and neck, headaches, and blurry vision. The kids ask about her every day and whine dramatically "I MISS HER". I do the same to my colleagues!
Life in my classroom is so busy and so stressful, that I've decided to end this post on a positive note:

An Apple a Day...

...doesn't necessarily keep the doctors away!

Especially when my aide gets hit by a door and has to have an emergency CT scan. The scan was clear, but she can't come back to work until Friday. Don't worry, the news only kept me up well past my bedtime, fretting about what activities I could possible do whole group today. Despite the sleep deprivation, today went swimmingly. I can't say if anything academic was accomplished, but I didn't run screaming onto the field, so I consider that to be a success.

I've had my own adventures with doctors today. Since being diagnosed with keratitis, my eyes will no longer accept contacts without becoming inflamed. My choices are pretty much glasses for the rest of my life, or lasek surgery (note: not lasik, lasek). Today was my consultation to see if I was a good candidate for the surgery. I am. As it turns out, my insurance policy is not a good candidate for footing the bill. Fifteen percent off of 5000 dollars doesn't add up to much, actually! Especially since we're hoarding our "wealth" for our move and impending expenses. We'll see. Haha... get it? We'll SEE?

On a related note, when I was little and mom and dad would take me to the doctor, they would always "waste time" and ask the doctors about a gazillion questions (and some, not even medical). I would always perceive the doctors to be annoyed. That made me annoyed. I vowed I would never do such a thing when I grew up. WELL GUESS WHAT PEOPLE??? I am turning into my father! I wouldn't have noticed except that both ophthalmologists said I was their most curious patient ("What's that?" "What does that thing do?" "How is that going to measure the thickness of my cornea?" "What does the lasek procedure entail?" "What did people do back in the day before all of this technology?" "How old are you?"). Later, as I was firing my barrage of questions at the head ophthalmologist, trying to write down his answers on a scrap piece of paper (but kind of failing because my pupils were extremely dilated and I couldn't see a thing in a close range), he laughed (in a nice way) and said he hadn't had a patient take notes in years!

I was embarrassed, but I couldn't stop. Thanks, dad. Thanks a lot!

Sick and Tired

Well, my body finally quit on me. I managed to hold out until my IEP meeting late this afternoon... then I called the sub system, threw some plans together and bolted for home. I'll spare you the details, but I sound like a deep-throated, coughing pre-pubescent teenager with an achy body. The symptoms were bad enough to justify missing the afternoon staff meeting.
So tomorrow my goal is to recover so I can be there for the kids and Fun Day Friday.

In other news, 40% of my students got into trouble and had to see the principal today (yes, folks, four of my ten!). Apparently, they thought it would be appropriate to gang up and tackle a fourth grade girl (who they probably liked but couldn't quite express it) to the ground and pull her hair. They really should have been suspended, but our strict administrator was out sick today, so instead all they got was lunch detention from the principal. Don't worry, I made sure they got the riot act from me. Ironically, they were all able to tell the principal that the rule is to "respect other people" and "keep your hands to yourself"--why they chose not to follow it is another story altogether. If my kids keep this up, my classroom is going to look like this !

Pink Eye Vacation

As you may have inferred from my oh-so-subtle title, I'm home right now because I have pink eye. I wondered if something was wrong when it took me five minutes to open my eyes this morning in the light. The tip off was the color of course. I put my glasses on and headed off to work anyways, because I am just that conscientious of a teacher. I did start to get a little nervous, however, when the drive to work was little more blurry than normal....
I waited outside the school nurse's office at 8:30 to see if she thought the redness in my eye was serious. I think she did, because she took one look at me and told me to go home immediately. So, with five minutes before the morning bell, I realized that there was no time to call a sub and my aide was taking a personal day. I split my kids in two groups and sent them to spend the day with my dear, understanding, helpful colleagues.

And that was that. I went to the doctor to get some eye-drops, and I've been home ever since. This is the FIRST sick day I've taken in all my years of teaching (one and one half years to be exact), and ironically, I feel just fine. I'm just uber-contagious.

I have big plans for today. Before my parents come over at four, I'm going to read my very interesting new novel, drink some hot tea, and I may even indulge in a bath. You should get pink eye too. It's fun!