i am thinking that yesterday had to be one of the nastier days i have had in a long time. it began with the news that six of our students had been involved in a car accident the night before. of the six, three were my students. one i taught last year, the other two i am currently teaching. the female student went home from the hospital yesterday, and the rest of the students, with one exception, are home with injuries. however, one, stephen, has been on a ventilator and life support since the accident and he is touch and go. he has multiple injuries to his body..."Multiple facial fractures, Right leg fractures, Bilateral lung injury/ chest tubes, aortic injury. So far, no cervical or spinal injuries, able to move everything." (from a email from the parent of a student who has been in the hospital with the family and is a nurse) he has had several surgeries in the last 24 hours, including a rod in the leg and this afternoon he was to have more surgery on his head. they have him in a medical coma and paralyzed and getting medication to create amnesia from the accident on. things are touch and go. however, the longer we go, i guess the better it is.
when i found this out, i just lost it. call it old age, menopause, or just being a silly woman. in any case, i just put my head down on the table and cried. i can still cry now, but not in the same way. what i was told yesterday morning was that it didn't look good, period.
as i was going into the office to confirm the information, i found an angel penny right at the door. i knew i was going to need it.
i spent most of the lst block getting my act together, and when i went to 2nd block, there were crying kids in there, which started me crying too. i left briefly to heat up my tea, and when i returned, the kids in that class had scattered pennies all around the room, lots of them, to cheer me up. i was really touched. one of the kids in the accident is in that class, so there were a lot of emotions going. in any case, we collected all of the pennies, and i decided that we couldn't do anything for stephen or the others short of collecting the angel pennies and giving them out. so today, i brought in a funky chili salsa bowl and we put pennies in for stephen and his family and the other kids. the rules were if you needed an angel, take a penny; if you had friends who needed an angel, take one and give it away. if you wanted to give an angel, drop a penny in. yesterday i had kids coming and taking pennies, even after school. a few kids dropped in quarters...25 angels in their view! :) i told the kids to spread the word, and they have. so we are collecting pennies in hopes that they will comfort those who need it, and if things don't work the way we wish for stephen, that the angels will help him cross and help those who love him.
yesterday just sucked, period. i had a tremendous headache, but had to stay at school to do grades, and i didn't leave until almost 7pm. i had to track down austin, who got a ride with hank and almost got into an accident himself when some idiot pulled out in traffic at a stoplight and almost hit hank. i got the email from the nurse parent, asking me to tell staff not to go to the hospital or contact the family. i forwarded it to staff, and broke about 9,000 privacy laws in school and elsewhere. i don't think about all that legal crap, and i was only thinking that they should know that his parents wanted privacy. i got called on it, but i moved on. by the time i got home, my headache was blinding, austin was home, and he reluctantly fixed supper and by 8PM i was in the bed. at 2am i heard the car alarm going off in the driveway. austin has apparently fallen asleep yet again on the couch and when he woke up to come to bed, he stepped on my keys which were on the stairs, and set off the alarm. that was fun. and then i woke up today and heard that hillary had won the ohio and texas primaries. sigh. well, that made yesterday just a bang up waste of time, so it was time to move on, and....
...today was better and i feel better about things. i did not have the headache this morning, austin got up and wasn't a problem, a former student of mine came to see me to have me fill out a recommendation for him to teach and take teaching classes at JMU. i got to visit with eric and he told me that i was the reason that he had decided to be a teacher and not a businessman. the kids did the pennies, we had good class discussions today on OF MICE AND MEN, and i got to come home right after school because austin was going to bebo's tonight, a rare treat for me not to have to go back out once i get home. in my heart, i feel ok about stephen. i don't feel like right now is his time to go. i don't know what that means really, other than when bad is about to happen, i generally know or get some sort of premontion about it. yesterday it did not feel good at all. but when i got the email yesterday saying exactly what had happened to him, i somehow felt like it was manageable. don't know why, or what that word will turn out to mean.
so i will continue to go about look for pennies and collecting them for the family...
easy
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