Sick!

So far, my center has had:

1. Pinkeye (three times)


2. H1N1


3. Impentigo


4. Lice


5. A Staph infection

Are we cursed?

The Twelve Days of Daycare

(To be sung to the tune of "The Twelve Days of Christmas)
Twelve hyper three year olds,
eleven missing gloves,
ten tossed off shoes,
nine bouts of crying,
eight changes of clothes,
seven major fights,
six "I want my mommy"s,
five spilled milks,
four hours outside,
three exploding diapers,
two crazy tantrums,
and one lice outbreak.

This was my week. Sorry I didn't post more last week---as you can see, it was a little intense!

Pink Eye

The little kid germs have got to me once again. It seems that when you work with seventy children under three years of age, the occasional case of pinkeye is inevitable.

I have it all: the sensitivity to light, the blurry vision, the yellow discharge, and the watery eyes.
After a quick stop at a walk-in clinic for prescription eye drops, I will have to eschew my contact lenses for a week. Not fun. Not fun at all.

At least I avoided the head lice going around our center, and the staph infection that one little nine month old has. All in all, I think I prefer pink eye.

Coping with ADD

I have a few little tricks I plan to implement this year to make living with my Attention Deficit Disorder a little easier. Here are just a few:

1) Scan and save important documents to a flash drive, resulting in less paperwork to be lost. Also, fewer boxes to move each year!

2) Utilize online bill pay. I often leave bills until the last minute, and this makes paying them easy and saves money on postage and late fees.

3) Schedule follow-up psychiatrist appointments a few months in advance. When I finish with one appointment, schedule the next two, and write them in my day planner. Also, request a phone call reminder so that even if I don't check my appointment book, I still won't miss my appointment.

4) Schedule automatic refills with Walmart. They'll call me when my prescription is ready, and I won't have to remember to fill my prescription before it runs out.

5) Write key phone numbers (doctor's office, work, psychiatrist scheduling office, apartment office) in my day planner, and input them in my phone as contacts. That way I'll have no excuse not to call in advance of needing a doctor's appointment.

What hints have you found helpful in your day-to-day life?

The Great Doctor Search

I need to find a doctor. I've had this horrible earache for a few days now, but no time to hit a clinic. I work from 8:30 to 5:30 Monday through Thursday, and commute 45 minutes each way. Friday, I volunteer at two different sites, with little time in between to actually wait in a clinic and be seen.

I really need to find a walk-in clinic with Friday hours, preferably close to my apartment. As it is, my apartment is kind of in the middle of nowhere, ten minutes from the a major road. It makes a quick jaunt over to a clinic nearly impossible, but it won't be that bad if I couple it with hitting the post office and bank.

In other news, my food stamps should be arriving any day now! It's my roommates' first time receiving them, so they are really excited. They have peppered me with questions about what they can buy (pretty much anything that is edible or drinkable, with the exception of alcohol and tobacco products). They also want to know where they can use them, and were thrilled when I told them that they could buy items at Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, the local co-op, the farmer's market, and even Walgreens. This will be incredible!

Wounds

Today I broke up two fights and bandaged a bleeding finger. Where are the gloves when you need them?


At my Red Cross First Aid and CPR class, the instructor said that you should always carry gloves. Having taken an informal poll at my workplace, only the nurse had gloves on her. I suppose it's understandable when a first aid kit is just a hallway away, but when a little kid comes at you with a gushing finger, you don't exactly have time to run down to the office and find a pair of gloves. The best you can do is grab a handful of paper towels and show the child how to apply pressure to their own wound, while you find the nurse. If the nurse is off duty? Well, then you get to put your First Aid class to good use.

I'm off to buy a first aid kit (or assemble one for the classroom using all of the materials in the nurse's office)...

No More Avocados

It will be a long, long time before I am ready to face another avocado.

Honestly, I love guacamole. There is no greater complement to Spicy Black Bean chips than a well prepared guacamole. However, after my latest case of food poisoning, I can't imagine eating anything containing avocados for at least a year.

This was my third case of food poisoning in two years. The other two cases took place in Central America, so they're really a whole different ball game. However, even one case of food poisoning in two years is really one case too many.

Sierra Mist, I Love You

I woke up on Friday morning with the worst feeling in the world: a raging case of food poisoning. I spent the next six hours barricaded in my bathroom, projectile vomiting. Fifteen times.

Did I mention that it was 1:30 in the morning? And that I really had to be at work the next day?

Needless to say, work didn't happen. I called the school switchboard at 5 a.m., just to let them know I cared. I e-mailed all the teachers I could reach, before sprinting back to the cool, cruel recess of the bathroom.

All of that changed when I met you. You took away my pain. You filled my very soul (and my stomach). Oh, Sierra Mist, how I love you.

Just a Little Too Tough

I've always been a little too tough on my body. I expect it to do so much---to function seamlessly from day to day, to put up with endless beatings from a tough lifestyle.

Is it any wonder that I can be sick for months at a time? I never let myself rest up. When most of the world would take a few days off of work to recover, I never do. At least not until I'm really sick (bronchitis, sinus infection mixed with an ear infection, or worse).

I need to be a little easier on my body. No more rollerblading when I have a sprained knee. No more cartwheeling while in a walking cast. No more mountain climbing with broken fingers or toes.

Some day I'll learn, I'm sure.

Bad Knee!

Apparently I wasn't thinking last week when I gave a guy's car a jump start. He had a bad knee, and he had to shove the car backward so that we could hook the jumper cables up. What I neglected to think about is how fickle my own knee can be. In brief? I'm now wearing a knee brace.

This makes working with the kindergarteners a lot trickier. It's practically a job prerequisite to be able to kneel down to their level. How else are you going to tie shoes and talk to them at eye level when they smear each other with boogers or start wrestling?

Hopefully with a little babying, my knee will heal right up. I guess I have to wait to break out the roller blades. Oh, well.

Sinus Infection, Double Ear Infection, Bronchitis: Will It Ever End?

This has been a long two months. There hasn't been a single day when I've felt completely well. It started with bronchitis and an ear infection in November (the worst cough I have ever had in my life), and then mutated into a sinus infection and a double ear infection in December. Given how crazy sick I've been for this long, I desperately want to get a swine flu vaccine---but they don't give those to sick people!

I'm on my last two days of antibiotics, and my fever's raging and my ear's hurting again. I've tried the sleep it off cure (I took Thursday off and slept all day, and didn't get out of bed until 3 p.m. today), but it's not working. I've been pounding the fluids, which helps a little. I wish I had a microwave for some heat packs---my landlady is avidly anti-microwave. Maybe I'll buy one at the thrift store and hide it in my room!

Still Sick

This has been a rough few weeks. After feeling absolutely exhausted for two weeks, I finally made it in to the doctor. An hour's wait later, I was diagnosed with bronchitis and an ear infection. While certainly not fun, it's great to finally have an explanation for my tiredness.

It's been two more weeks, and I'm still not feeling all that great. I still occasionally fall asleep at five in the afternoon, and only wake up when my alarm goes off in the morning. Maybe it's time for another doctors visit.

I'm lucky to have really good insurance. The cost of doctors visits are negligible. I hate to think what will happen when I reach twenty-five and am off my family's insurance policy---hopefully I'll have a good job by then (I guess living on a volunteer's living stipend won't be an option anymore). Monthly medication costs for depression meds are astronomical---nearly two hundred dollars without insurance. Going without them is not an option---it's just miserable, and not conducive to holding a steady job and living in any reasonably fulfilling way.

In the meantime, I will volunteer as much as possible, and try to discover my life's calling (that sounds so corny!) Hopefully I'll figure it all out soon.