First of all, I truly apologize for my blogging absence. When I resigned, effective the end of the school year, my school-owned laptop had to be returned, as well. Therefore, I have only had my phone and Kindle to work from, until I got a personal laptop late last week. So, I'M BACK!
The abrupt exit of the super-talented Simone Biles from Olympic competition brought the topic of mental health quickly into the living rooms of the world. While I LOVE watching her perform, I am so proud of her for being on the world's stage and having the courage, yes, COURAGE, to face the world head-on and say, "This isn't right for me right now." She's already highly decorated, has four moves named after her, is unable to receive the full point value for the moves she does, and truthfully, has nothing left to prove. I commend her for thinking of herself, and her safety, both physically and mentally!
Even though we are not Olympic athletes, we still need to be cognizant of our own mental health. Personally, this has never clearer to me than it became in the fall of 2018. Like Simone, but nowhere near her level of expectations, I experienced the mental health perfect storm. South-Central Kansas was having a monsoon. Seriously!! Many roads were closed and flooded. The rain was torrential! I had a speaking engagement in Wichita, about forty-five minutes from home, in good weather. I had never driven in Wichita by myself and I was driving the school district's car! To top it off, there was no Guest Teacher for my classroom because they simply couldn't get to the school. My two paras were running the classroom. While I was at the conference, I learned that they were not even following my lesson plans and the kids were running amuck. Just great!
I made it through my presentation and then was the lunch break. As I was going through the smorgasbord line, I felt the beginning of a migraine. Mine are brought on by stress and I have a medication I can take at the onset of a migraine to lessen the severity. However, this medication also messes with my vision and makes me dizzy. I couldn't take the medication and safely drive a vehicle that I wasn't familiar with, during a monsoon, back to Hutchinson, so I left the conference right away to hopefully make it home before a full-blown migraine hit me. The perfect storm--literally. I didn't work.
When I got home, I went straight to bed, fully clothed. I did everything I was supposed to do-ice pack across my eyes, heating pad on my lower back, no lights, no sound. It was too late! The nausea hit. I couldn't even lift my head from the pillow. I've never had a migraine like that one, thank heavens. I told my husband that I needed to go to the ER. He tried to get me to his car, but I couldn't make it, so he called 9-1-1. Let me tell you, the paramedics that I had were simply AMAZING! I couldn't see them because of the ice pack over my eyes, but they were so very kind and compassionate. Because I couldn't walk and they couldn't get the stretcher into our bedroom (tight corner), they had to fashion a lift of sorts with a tarp to get me to the stretcher. Remember the monsoon?? Yep. I had to be wheeled to the ambulance during the monsoon.
When I got to the ER, they did all kinds of blood work, an EKG, and hooked me up to all kinds of machines. They gave me something in my IV that was *supposed* to take the edge off. I didn't make a dent. I remember them asking me to rate my pain on a scale of 1-10. I told them "18." They said their scale didn't go that high. I said they needed to revise their rating scale. They kept adding more anti-nausea meds and pain meds to my IV until I could finally carry on a bit of a conversation. They still weren't sure what was going on with me. When I heard them order a CT scan, still with the ice pack over my eyes, I asked my nurse what that was for. He said that they were looking for a brain aneurysm. Let me tell you, that will scare the living daylights out of you real quick! After all of the test results came back, the ER team decided that it was "just a really bad migraine." and finally sent me home around 4 am. It took at least three or four more days until I was fully functioning again.
All this to say, take care of yourself first! This was my self-care wake-up call. I learned, that night, to listen to what my body is telling me. Here's what I discovered: if you don't make time for self-care, your body will do it for you. I've learned to pace myself and to not put too much on my plate. I've also learned that it's okay to spend the whole day on the couch reading some trashy romance novel. In fact, when I feel like things are piling up and getting overwhelming, I read. Reading is my escape from whatever my reality is at that moment.
It's also okay to say, "No." or "Not right now." We have to be okay with not doing it all. On the flip side, others need to be okay with hearing it, understanding, and giving grace.
It's okay to cry. Sometimes things just get overwhelming. Crying is cleansing. It's too bad that our society has been taught that crying is a weakness. IT'S NOT! I do my best problem-solving after a good cry! I bet I've cried three or four times in the past few days. Trying to get a Missouri teaching certificate, even though Missouri has a reciprocal agreement with Kansas, and my Kansas certificate is valid for four more years, is freaking impossible! Not to mention that school starts in just three short weeks. So while I'm going back and forth with the Missouri certification people, I'm also blogging for you guys. And you know what? It will all work out.
Friends! Take care of yourselves. Last school year was crazy with all of the protocols and it looks like it's going to be the same for this year, I'm sorry to say! Lean on each other! We're all in this together! Share your stories. That's how we build strength. That's why I'm sharing mine!
