I’m writing this while running a fever. It’s not too high of a fever, so, don’t panic. This is not my “last words” in blog format, or anything like that. No, I just have a fever, because I either have a cold, or I have what will become a raging sinus infection when it grows up. The reason I have this cold, (or soon to be sinus infection), is because I work with children. The occupational hazard of teaching is that you catch absolutely everything! Every cold, flu, virus, germ, parasite… every last damned one of them.
I just started teaching again about six months ago. I love what I do. I work with wonderful coworkers. I find the students to be fascinating, each in his or her own way. I truly feel like I have found where I am supposed to be right now. The only thing I would change, if I could, is the level of sickness I am exposed to.
Kids sneeze into the air, showering everything in their path with microscopic virus laden droplets. Younger kids simply do not see the reason why we ask them to use a tissue instead of a sleeve, why we discourage them from picking their noses, why we insist they wash their hands after they leave the bathroom. So, of course, they avoid those annoying little activities unless some adult is right there, nagging them about it. All it takes is one kid to get sent to school with a cold, and I am doomed. Germs spread like sand at the beach, and you can’t help but have a few grains attached to you that you didn’t even see.
I have been severely sick three times in the six months since I’ve gone back to teaching. Twice is from what I call “The Curse of the New Building”. Ever wonder how many strains of the “common cold” exist? Count up all the different public school building that exist. I’m convinced there is a unique strain in each and every one of them. Three weeks into my new job, I got a nasty sinus infection. It was as though the germs somehow knew that I was “fresh meat”, that I hadn’t had time to build up a natural immunity to them. They attacked.
It is no fun to be on antibiotics for a week while at a new place of employment. It’s less fun to be on antibiotics while working with Special Ed kids that can get violent, throw chairs, or “elope”. “Elope”, I learned, means running like a gazelle, in a fit of rage, tears, and emotional instability, towards wherever it is they are driven to run to. It means you must run along behind them, in short, for their own safety, if you are their teacher. Without going into TMI, let’s just say my stomach-on-antibiotics did not thank me for this extra physical activity.
Things got less fun when the first round of antibiotics failed to do it’s job. I have one that I use all the time, and it always brings me right back to health, often before I even finish the dose. Not this time! Instead, I spent a second week on the second round of antibiotics. Finally, those worked, and I got better for a while, until the resident common cold came and found me.
Of course, I happen to start teaching again right when this pandemic of “Swine Flu” (that we aren’t supposed to call “Swine Flu”), hits. I had the worst flu I’ve ever had this school year. It took me out a week, and I have never in my life been so exhausted. Not even when I worked three jobs while going to college full time.
When I first started teaching, I worked as a substitute teacher every single school day, but it didn’t pay the bills. To supplement, I was working overnights in a department store stocking shelves. Monday through Wednesday, I got up early, drove to whatever school I was assigned, worked all day and came home. Thursday, I got up early, worked at school all day, came home, caught a quick nap and grabbed a bite to eat, and then went to my overnight stocking job. I got off work with just enough time to drive home, take a shower, change clothes, and go directly back to whatever school I was assigned to on Friday. Then, Friday after school, I’d take a nap, eat if there was time, and go back to the overnight job stocking shelves. This went on for months. On the weekends, I was too exhausted to do much more than desperately try and catch up on sleep. This strain of whatever kind of flu bug I caught at school this year made me think of how tired I was back when I worked retail all night and pretended to be a teacher by day, and envy the energy my past self had at that time. This flu was that bad. I shudder to think about the possibility of catching whatever the H1N1 mutates into come Fall.
This year, when the paraeducators were asked if we would like to teach Summer School, I decided to say yes. A decision based in large part on my desire to be able to continue to pay the bills until the normal school year starts up again. I am three weeks into working in a school building I have never set foot in before, with children and coworkers who were complete strangers to me three weeks ago. The “Curse of the New Building” has found me, and decided to torment me once again. And so, here I sit, wishing the “super-human immune system” that veteran teachers have the opportunity to grow will start to at least begin to take root for me sometime soon.
It could be worse, I suppose. I could be sitting here suffering from “Hands Foot and Mouth Disease”, which I did, in fact, catch from a child who I was watching over at a day care center years ago. Story for another time, perhaps.
