February 27th, 2009
One bad thing about working with first aid and ex emt and medical people is that if you get injured, as long as it’s under control…you get laughed at. I mean, it was kinda funny…
So yesterday I was fixing some stuff and using packing tape to seal it all up. This packing tape came on one of those badass big handled industrial sized roller-holders with the easy slice cutting blades…. feel where I’m heading with this story???
I’m slicing off my last piece of tape and right as I push down and twist my wrist slightly to break the tape off… I realize that I just totally clawed one of my fingers as well. The .02 seconds it took for me to set down the packing tape dispenser was all that was needed to watch my finger flow crimson. Right out the middle knuckle of my left middle finger.
I was alone at the moment and trained in first aid. .04 seconds later I had my right hand clamped over my finger heading to our utility sink dripping blood the whole 5 steps. I released pressure from my finger to grab a paper towel and I’m not kidding you, you read about blood PULSING out of people in books…well… I was pulsing blood out what looked like a razor toothed smiley face-minus the eyes. Shredded skin and everything.
I am sooo glad I didn’t pass out on myself-that would have been bad but funny at the same time. Even still, I tried to remain calm and continued to keep steady pressure. I had to re fold the towel a few times cos I kept leaking through it, both my hands were smeared in blood, a corner of the sink was starting to congeal… if the co worker I was waiting for to come back and help fix stuff with me didn’t come back when she did I would have probably started raising my voice for someone to come get me gauze and roller bandages.
My coworker comes in, sees the blood trail and after determining I wasn’t going to pass out on myself, helped me with the gauze as I continued to try to stop bleeding. If I didn’t stop when I did, I probably would have gone to the hospital–today I was told it looked like I might have needed like…a stitch or half of one if that counts for anything. 35 minutes later I was washed up, on my 3rd layer of gauze (which was a gauze change), roller bandaged and gloved. Yes I did get laughed at.
Today I was in a splint all day because this cut is literally pretty much a gash that stopped at my knuckle bone and some meat under and to the side of it. I was leaking a bit more than I should have been and my finger is purple and a little swollen. It’s kinda funny teaching kids with my middle finger sticking up.
I got a bunch of thank you letters from a middle school class I taught a few months ago. I got the most surprising note from an 8th grade boy who gave me the toughest time. He was always very what if, and that’s stupid but I guess I made an impact cos the teacher informed me that during the annonymous report of the session (teacher knows the kids handwriting) this guy wrote that my class had a lot of informative information and he really enjoyed it a lot and was glad I taught them. In his thank you note to me, he apologised for the class being so talkative and that he thought I was a good teacher and that I was patient and he had a lot of fun and hopes many more kids can learn from me.
Of course this wasn’t written on the construction paper cards the other kids designed and wrote, this was on a piece of notebook paper torn out of his book. I can just imagine him scribbling it out all angsty and ripping it out of his binder at the last minute and shoving it under the rest of the thank you’s.
I got a lot of hearts and happy faces and stars and even a unicorn drawing and some random cute stickers. I know we all used to be forced to write thank-you’s when we were younger but they really do mean a lot to the people who recieve them. Plus, these cards weren’t all repetative notes, almost every one of them had something different. One girl, who previously took the class but went through it again with me said she enjoyed the class but didn’t learn anything new ’sorry’ she said. ‘but thank you anyway’. That one made me laugh.
This next batch of classes is going to be real crazy.
Sometimes I have no idea how I keep my sanity. I think my job…our instructors are spoiled rotten. Our class size is minimum of 8 no more than maybe…12/13 depending on the instructor’s experience. Any more than that require additional instructors.
Some of the exact same classes I’m teaching in schools are upwards of 22-30 students. By. My. Self. I’ve gotten to the point that I’m making a normal 7 hour course as close to over 8 as I can stretch the school district to allow (as it translates to 8 weeks once a week, or 8 days every class period time). I don’t work weekends which might be something I’ll implement next year if my grant gets renewed.
I fully appreciate teachers who actually assist me in crowd control and are eager to have a hand asking relevant questions that overlap from their own curriculum to mine. I have one teacher who flat out sends disruptors out after 3 warnings which translates into them not getting certified–which is all forwarned at the beginning but it’s nice that student’s real teachers step in with discipline rather than me. Not that I haven’t had to do a few of those myself I’m flying solo…I’m just real, real rusty with the disciplineage.
Anyway, that’s about it. I’m seeping into my bandaid from all this typing…time to re-splint.