Thursday, February 01, 2007
big bear winterim
i have 17 students up here at big bear all week long. it’s a field trip that they planned and fund raised and earned all last semester.
jealous, right? what kind of job lets me snowboard all week?
well.... it hasn’t been all fun and games, lemme tell you that! on tuesday, a girl landed on a rail with her knee. she couldn’t walk after that, but it was just a really bad bruise and she was over it by the end of the night.
then on wednesday, i’d only done one run and was going for my second when i got a phone call - “kim! matt hurt himself! bad! come down to ski patrol!” when i got there, i found out that he had broken his collarbone. no, not broken. re-broken! apparently he had broken it during the summer, about 5 months ago, and he was just revisiting his old wounds....
so then this morning, while i was still asleep in bed, i heard the students yelling my name… i thought they just wanted me to cook breakfast for them but then i realized it was an emergency when they said my diabetic student had fallen hard.
i ran down the stairs and into the kitchen and found him lying on the floor, his head in a puddle of blood… he seemed on the brink of consciousness and i tried to get him to respond to me, and i was afraid he wasn’t breathing or that he might choke, so then i hoisted him up and propped him up against the cabinet. when i let go he fell towards the ground again, so i had to pick him up again and i propped him up with my legs so that i could open his emergency bag and dig around for the needle so i could get his blood sugar back up. my right hand was all bloody and since i was useless using only my left arm, my other students helped me, they found the glucose tablets and i gave it to him, but he wasn’t even chewing it. they finally found the needle and the glucogen and i was shaking while trying to get it to work, and thank God the paramedics came at that time! they took care of him from there and i rode with the ambulance to the hospital down the street…
i was so relieved when i got back to the cabin to find that the students mostly decided to not go snowboarding. i thought that was a mature decision for most of them because i knew they really really wanted to but they were being cautious and we’ve had injuries each day…
then there were 6 that wanted to go boarding anyways, so i brought them to the mountain. i got the call around 2pm today that yet another student had fallen and hit her chest on the board and was in danger of having broken ribs. i got to the mountain and ski patrol advised x-rays, so back to the ER i went with her this time around.
waiting for yet another hour for yet another student who had gotten yet another injury.
i am SO ready to be home....