I Didn’t Get the Flu Shot

It seems that flu season has turned my classroom into a hospital waiting room.

Picture a square, cinder-block room with encouraging posters hung on the wall in an attempt to dispel the boring lack of paint and old furniture and to perhaps insulate the room with enough color to ward off the cold. But for the student teacher, I mean nurse, whose desk is next to the window and too far from the heater, the cold creeps in anyway.

Outside that window, a beautiful courtyard designed to provide comfort for the institution’s inhabitants sits still, lonely, save the occasional passerby on their way to another corner of cinderblock. The sun hides behind a cloud, spilling a fuzzy white halo over the opposite wing of the building.

Back inside, only half of the fluorescent lights are turned on, another attempt to make the room more inviting, causing confusion for the inhabitants’ eyes: they squint in the middle of the room and widen as they gaze off into a dark corner to collect their thoughts, only to squint again when they return to the lit screen in front of them.

The room’s inhabitants are in a peculiar state of collaboration; little in common that they know of, they become companions in this place as they wait to see their loved ones and proceed with their lives at the end of the day. And the nurse at the desk by the window watches, wondering how she will transform that day of waiting into something memorable for them. You see, she has been put in charge of the waiting room. Her job is to take care of the waiters, to provide what they need, which means something different for each one.

Some of her waiters are simply bored; they know that they will leave that day, “graduate” if you will, and go on to whatever they feel like doing. They need to be challenged. Others know that their lives are about to change forever because they are here for something important. They need to be celebrated, encouraged. Still others, usually those who sit in the back with headphones in their ears, pretending to drown out their surroundings, are broken with doubt and uncertainty. They forget or refuse to take care of themselves, so the nurse has to constantly remind them to eat, drink water, and know that they can do this. She has been at this job for a little while now and has begun to feel comfortable, capable. She knows how to see what her waiters need and help them get it.

Enter flu season, slithering through the cold window to remind her that she still has so much to learn.

Now, in addition to the nurse’s usual responsibilities, she has to keep her waiters safe from sickness, constantly wiping down tables and passing out hand sanitizer. The waiters are dropping like flies, and each day the nurse sends another one home because they need rest and because they are endangering those around them. The hospital, where people are supposed to be healed, is now a breeding ground for the ick.  And on top of keeping her waiters healthy and taken care of, the nurse has to protect herself, which has begun to inhibit the way she usually cares for them. Suddenly the young man who needed compassion and encouragement (and who feels the need to stand too close when he talks) is a threat because he had the flu last week.

For the sake of not overdoing the metaphor, let’s transition back into my classroom.

In addition to the usual chaos, my days now include the following duties:

• Sanitize everything.
• Lecture students about hygiene and insist that they STOP TOUCHING EACH OTHER
• Talley the day’s casualties
• Sanitize again
• Reteach yesterday’s material to recovering wards while dodging their poorly-covered coughs
• Write passes to the nurse
• Realize they coughed on the pencil I just used and sanitize again
• Figure out how to condense today’s work into a makeup packet that students can teach themselves.
• Grade make-up assignments for half of my class.
• Sanitize again.
  

I’m doing my best to stay healthy. I’m writing the lesson plans, staying hydrated, taking airborne. But inevitably, I will miss something. Some germ, some problem, some intruder will get through my freshly-wiped wall. I decided not to get the flu shot, and that may come to haunt me. But I can’t cover every possibility.

So instead, I am prepared to embrace whatever germs break through and congratulate them on a job well done. There is a bottle of robitussin in my bathroom closet and a bottle of red wine on top of my refrigerator to remind me that, come hell or high fever, I will make it work.