Hospital Field Trip

Yay! I'm on vacation!

Well, sort of. Pesach really requires a lot of STUFF to get done, doesn't it? After school today I really wanted to celebrate, but I really just had to go grocery shopping and clean chometz out of my office.

Truthfully, I should have just celebrated. I couldn't concentrate.

In any case, today my class and another class visited a hospital to deliver stuffed animals they'd collected through Operation Noah. It was a good experience for the kids. They were given a tour of the pediatric ward and got to see the nursery in the maternity section of the hospital.

I had a hard time though.

One of the first things that happened when we arrived was that we saw a video for kids that talks about what happens if you have to come in for an operation. I knew I might feel emotional during the trip, and this was when it happened. I felt very anxious and tense and had to hold back tears. Images from the video reminded me too much of some of my cancer experiences. I've said again and again... it's one thing for me to go through it. It's another to have to watch it happen to someone else when there's nothing I can do. All the more so if it's a child. And even more all the more so now that I have my own child.

I fnally decided I should leave the room for a few minutes and ducked into the bathroom to cry a little. The other teacher checked up on me when I came back. She said she'd seen me struggling during the film itself. She too had had difficulty because of some problems one of her children faced after birth.

In any case, I think I kept my feelings away from the kids successfully. I had one student who was very anxious about the idea of having blood drawn. But moments later he was almost as anxious at the fact that he couldn't have the animal cookies on the receptionist's desk.