Today I found out that Celeste, one of my former students who's in 7th grade now, has had a really tough past few months. Turns out that since hitting her head in a car accident recently, Celeste has had two epileptic seizures. And then a month ago, her dad had a serious stroke while he was at work. He has been hospitalized ever since. Currently, he can't talk and is almost entirely paralyzed on the left side of his body, though he can wiggle his toes. I got all this news from Celeste's second-grade sister. I ran into the second grader on the playground and asked how Celeste was. Out spilled all the details, very matter-of-factly. But this normally very bubbly second grader was clearly out-of-sorts.
Students' lives can contain such tragedy. And health issues occupy a surprising amount of my time.
This year, I have a student with diabetes. She needs to get her insulin levels checked every day at lunch and has to stay in at recess every morning for a snack. She was hospitalized for almost a week last summer when her diabetes was diagnosed. I have another student this year who has a hormone disorder which made her grow to her full adult height by the end of third grade. She is 5'9" now, I'd say, and looks like she's at least 15. I don't know the name of her condition, but she goes frequently for MRIs and check-ups. I have another student David (mentioned in the "duda") post) with achondroplasia, which means he is a little person. His mom is illiterate in Spanish and in English, so she sometimes has difficulty accessing services for him, but he has a team of doctors that keep tabs on him. I have two students with serious asthma and lots more with less-serious asthma. One of the serious asthma cases, Leonardo, also has serious vision issues that went uncorrected until this year because his mom didn't have health insurance and couldn't pay for an opthamologist's exam. Janette has spent much of the year without her glasses, which keep breaking. And Marco just went to get his glasses today, after being referred for them back in October.
For the large number of my students without health insurance, these health problems are that much more complicated and stressful. Whenever people start talking about denying health care services to undocumented immigrants and their children, I can't even bear to listen for very long. Are they honestly saying that they want Leonardo to die of an asthma attack? Or that Celeste shouldn't get epilepsy medication?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment