SUBSTITUTE TALES – Today I subbed an afternoon with students with Intellectual Disabilities (ID) that I have subbed for several times previously this year. I’ve come to know them pretty well and had taught a few of them Skills Level Math before I retired this past spring. It was an easy afternoon job and things went well until near the end of the last period. I had finished the lesson with a class of about 13 kids and had told them that they could draw in the back of the sheet of paper that we had been working on and talk quietly for the remaining minutes. Everything was going well. The kids were behaving. Next thing I knew, one of the girls was down on the floor and seemed to be in pain. There had been no horseplay or disruption. From anything that we could tell, she had just been walking to the back of the room and may have tripped and hit her knee on the floor or something like that. The Para went over to her and I followed. The girl was sitting on the floor in kind of a crossed-leg position and holding her left knee and kind of writhing around a bit. I could see by looking at her knee that her knee cap had been dislocated. It was off to the side a bit and obviously out of place. So I tried to calm her and keep her leg somewhat immobilized and keep her as comfortable as possible for her while the Para went to call for the nurse. I had also remembered that the athletic trainer would likely be in the building and had mentioned calling her in as well – which they did. From my college training in my PE Major, I knew that knee caps occasionally could wind up out of place and could be put back into place fairly easily, but I didn’t want to be the one to try doing so. While everyone was on the way, I kept talking to the girl and trying to calm her down. She was shaking and was very upset that her knee didn’t seem to be right. She is a very tactile-sensitive kid (she’ll offer her hand for a handshake and then say, “Ouch”, upon doing so) and something like this was rather major in that it probably involved actual pain. The school nurse got there, but wasn’t familiar with re-setting knee caps. The athletic trainer showed up and she was easily able to get the knee cap back into position (once we got the girl to relax a bit), but it didn’t want to stay in place. So she had me hold it in place and keep the leg somewhat straight while she went to get a couple of foam coated splints and some Ace Bandage and she wrapped it up with splints on each side of it so that the knee cap would at least stay in place on top of her knee. It wasn’t known right away whether any of her family could come to get her, and so just to be safe, paramedics were called. The fire department also showed up, stayed for a bit and left once they knew that their services weren’t really needed since the paramedics were also there. We had quite a room full of people there for a while – with school administration, paras, teachers, the nurse and her para and some trainee, the athletic trainer, three paramedics and four firemen. The student’s father finally showed up. By this time, school had been out for about a half hour. The girl was put into a wheel chair, the paramedics left, and she was taken out to her father’s SUV to be taken to the doctor. Well that was exciting. Since the Y pool closes from 4:45 – 5:30 p.m. I wasn’t going to have enough time for laps, so I went and got a haircut on my way home and then went and swam laps at 5:30 for 40 minutes and another 1,200 yards logged.
Posted on: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 03:41:52 +0000
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