Absolute Drainage (originally posted 7/13/2008)

Sometimes things happen at the worst possible times. At close to 12:15pm on Tuesday, July the 8th, the principal of my school walked into my classroom to see how things were going. It wasn't the total disaster that it could have been. Some of the students were out of their seats, but most of them were engaged in Mathematics centers that I have set up around the room. It was a bad time for him to walk in because, without his knowledge (and without, at the time, my own knowledge) my body was in the room, but I was nowhere to be found. Truth be told, I actually have very little memory of this, or any other part of the day, actually happening. July 8th was, for me, only a day of severe abdominal pain and blurred, drifting vision. If I try to recall that day at the time my principal walked in to visit me, it's like watching a home movie that was filmed by a gorilla—with the camera strapped to its head.

As it turns out, I was severely dehydrated and ended up in the hospital with saline fluid (Gatorade in a bag, according to the doctor) dripping into me intravenously. I don't know who else has had this experience, but it is both the worst and best feeling I can think of. Dehydration is the ultimate in shitty feelings—NOTHING works right and everything hurts. This goes for the brain, as well, so functions such as speech, vision, walking in a straight line—they are all impaired. To make matters worse, there was nausea involved, which really bugs me because the absolute last thing my body needs to do when faced with an internal drought is expel more bodily fluids.

It is the nausea, actually, when I was at last attended to by the doctor, that began the happy feelings. In order to inhibit the nausea, you see, I was given a sedative to relax my stomach muscles. The story goes like this: I was delirious already, and when I am in extraordinary amounts of discomfort I tend to fight it with humor. I wish I could remember exactly what I had said, but when the doctor who gave me the nausea-inhibiting shot came to stick me in the hindquarters with it, I said something that got us both laughing. Then, after I got the shot, she couldn't find the place she had stuck me to cover with a band-aid. I guess I didn't bleed at all, but that didn't stop her from poking around to try and make some blood bead up. The sedative started working around this time and I couldn't keep from giggling like a maniac—enough to make another doctor enter the room to inform us that we were having "too much fun" in there. She eventually gave up looking, evidently deciding that I didn't need a band-aid if I wasn't bleeding.

The goofy nausea medicine is one thing, but getting all juiced up again with that saline-solution IV is something else entirely. It is not a good or relieving feeling, exactly, but in a strange way I could tell that my body was very gradually being replenished with what it desperately needed. Combined with being drugged up, the world melted away leaving only the drip, drip, drip of the the saline solution from the IV bag into the tube. I needed two bags of that stuff, and I lay there for two hours, in one position, just watching those rhythmic drips for the entire time.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

This sounds like it could be the most dull thing imaginable—watching the proverbial paint dry, but at the time it was fascinating, like I was watching the sunrise on some distant world. That's what it was: unworldly. Of course, I was out of my freaking mind.

Now, this isn't the first time this has happened. It actually happened back in March for the first time, at an even more inconvenient time. I was giving the Maryland School Assessment (MSA) standardized test to my students. For those who don't know, third grade is the first grade of this type of testing in the state of Maryland. Therefore, it was my students' first experience with it and they needed me there to give it and put them at ease. It couldn't have been too good for them to see their poor teacher nearly pass out in front of the class. The dehydration then was far worse than it was this time. Even so, I am worried about the repeat offense. The doctors suggested that it could be stress related, which is just great. There's not much they can do in an emergency situation other than hydrate me, so I need to see my doctor. I have an appointment after school this Tuesday. Blah.

I have been starting and failing to complete blog entries about my summer school class and the curriculum, but my thoughts continually arrive at that hospital visit five days ago. Hopefully, I will be able to discuss my class soon. They really are an interesting little bunch. Until then, I need to get working on some of these other projects I have lying around. I hope this entry wasn't too muddled. Let me know if it was!