Me and My Beard: Day One Hundred Eighteen

Dear Readers,
My dear wife, Raina, is guest blogging for me. She had an eventful day and I thought it would be great to hear about what happened to her. Enjoy the story.

      What a crazy day I had today. It started with the 5:30 am wake up call to substitute for a 1st grade classroom at one of my favorite schools. I was pretty tired this morning after a rough night of sleep. David fell asleep upstairs and no matter how many times I tired to wake him to come to bed he did not budge. I find it hard to sleep without him next to me. Sometimes I find it hard to sleep with him next to me. Those of you who have heard him snore, I'm sure, can understand. I know, crazy. But anyways, I digress. When I arrived at the school I was notified that today was going to be an easy day, the teacher left me lesson plans and there would be an earthquake drill in the morning as well as an assembly later that afternoon. At about 10:20 the earthquake drill started and then after about 5 min someone comes on over the intercom saying the drill was canceled. No big deal. During the drill one of the girls, who came to school with a smashed nail, told me her nail got hit going under the desk and it was bleeding. I sent her to the office. She immediately came back and told me that they told her to come back to class and she could come back later. I thought that was really weird that they didn't even give her some ice for her finger that was swelling up a bit. Since the teacher assumed we were having an earthquake drill, I did not have any work for the students to do to fill the 45 min of open time. I rummaged through some of her drawers and found a couple of worksheets we could work on. I hope she wasn't saving them for anything special. Shortly after I got a phone call from the office saying that there was a student medical emergency and that I would probably see teachers and students really upset and to try and carry on as normal as possible and if my kids had any questions just tell them that a kid got hurt and left in an ambulance. I was thinking WOW he must have really been hurt. I then took the students to lunch and while in the teachers lounge heating up my food I heard the whole story...well at least bits and pieces of someones interpretation of the story.
      Apparently a student in a fifth grade class was talking to his neighbor next to him saying that his veins looked weird. Then the earthquake drill started. As this kid was going down, he had a seizure and hit his head on the desk. One of his classmates got the teacher and she ran over there to see what was going on. She immediately realized that he was unresponsive. He was pale, you could only see the whites of his eyes and he wasn't breathing. I do not really know any more details of how she got a hold of the office or what I just know that a Pregnant RTI teacher was also in the room, or near by and she quickly divided the remaining students up and sent them to other classrooms. She was also running around like crazy making sure the paramedics were coming etc. (Ironically this same teacher was in the lounge this morning talking to the principle about a mock injury during the earthquake drill. And the principal said to the teacher, Are you sure your kids would know what to do if you were to play injured. She said yes of course we have talked about what to do in an emergency) I did hear that the student was unresponsive for 10 min while the principal was giving the student CPR waiting for the ambulance to arrive. Eventually the student started to vomit into the mouth of the the principal, she would spit it out and continue on with the CPR because he still was not breathing on his own. As the RTI teacher explain it, he would vomit in her mouth she would spit it out and go back in, then he would vomit in her mouth she spit it out until the paramedics finally arrived. The paramedics needed to use a defibrillator to shock his heart back to start. As I am listening to the story, watching the teachers crying around me, my heart is breaking. As I was leaving for the day I dropped by a classroom of one of the teachers to drop off some materials she let me borrow to do something during the assembly time, and she told me she heard the student was going to be OK, still in the hospital but OK. This teacher apparently had his sister in her classroom and he comes from a great family and would be well taken care. Praise God, I thought, as I was walking to the office to turn in my key. I walked through the lounge and heard teachers saying they heard they found blood in the students brain and he may have had an aneurysm, the Secretary told me she hadn't hear anything about the student but he wasn't breathing for 10 min and how its not good for the brain. I do not know what the real status of this student is but as I left, there were still unanswered questions and a lot of concerned classmates and teachers. I left with my heart broken sadness surrounding me, this is an 11 or 12 year old child whose parents sent him to school this morning just as a routine and they end the day in the hospital with a child whose heart stopped. I pray that this student is OK and that the principal as well as his teacher would be revered for their heroic acts. It is not easy being a teacher, and they do not get enough credit rightly deserved to them. The state wants to put more kids in a classroom to fire more teachers to save money for the budget. Meanwhile out of the ordinary events occur and it is harder to pay attention to 38 children in a classroom. It is all just so so sad.

      What a crazy day Raina had and I hope you all keep this student in your prayers. Hopefully that kid is going to be okay.

This Day In History: 1981
Xerox introduces the first computer with a mouse and point-and-click interface, but it failed to catch on, perhaps because of the price: $16,500.

Born This Day: 1822
Ulysses S. Grant - 18th U.S. president

"Labor disgraces no man, but occasionally men disgrace labor."

-Ulysses S. Grant