Continuing the Drama

On Wednesday, I was forced to go to a meeting at Central Office for my county. I am the math representative for 4th grade and had to meet with other 4th grade teachers in the county to plan for next year -- a meeting I was absolutely dreading, given I won't even be there next year. While I was there this woman innocently came up to me and said, "A good friend of mine is transferring to Lula to teach 4th grade next year. You should get to know him. He's such a nice guy," and on and on. Pretty much, she was telling me my replacement had been chosen, which my principal had failed to share with me. What a slap in the face, especially because I'm constantly being told that there's a possibility I'll be back since, given the number of students in 3rd grade, they can't afford to completely eliminate a 4th grade class. So, toward the end of the meeting, I got a phone call from the school nurse that Drew had fallen off of some bars on the playground and landed on her back and had the wind knocked out of her, and her wrist was hurting, but they applied ice to her wrist and she seemed ok now. So, I tolerated the rest of a pointless, nauseating meeting, and left early using the excuse that I had to pick up my kids from school. When I got back to the school, I asked the principal about the transferring teacher, to which he responded, "I can neither deny or confirm that at this time." I actually asked him a million questions, and he answered them all well, and we had a good talk, and he explained that the principals had been told not to share that information until after their next meeting, and he's a rule follower, so that's why he hadn't told me yet. He did confirm it the next day after his meeting and said that there were too many tenured teachers at this guy's school, so they had to find somewhere else for him to go, and all of us laid-off people had been replaced, except for kindergarten. Anyways, that seemed like enough drama to do me for the rest of the week at least, and I was pretty exhausted after it all, because the other 4th grade teachers were also pretty upset (or at least acted that way for me) stating that they're breaking up a family and they don't understand what they're doing. That made me feel pretty good, and I do love working with them, which will make the last day of school really hard. But, I gathered myself together and headed home. By the time we got home, Drew was still crying on and off about her fall and her wrist. She could move her hand, but cried whenever she moved her thumb, so Andy looked at it when he got home, and we decided one of us should take her to the emergency room. On a more positive note, the ER up here is just a couple minutes from our house, and is newly renovated, and doesn't have near the nasty people in it that the other one we went to did, so that was nice. We were there for about 3 hours, and, yes, her wrist is broken. At the ER, there wasn't a radiologist or an orthopedist on at the time, so the doctors there said it looked broken to them, but they couldn't give us details, and it's near growth plates, so they splinted it and wrapped it and put it in a sling and sent us home with x-rays, pain medicine, and a phone number for an orthopedist. I called Thursday to make an appointment for Friday (not at all upset that I would have to take the whole day off Friday), and we headed to the orthopedist for more details. After waiting for almost 2 hours, we were taken back to the room extremely irritated, but the nurse and the P.A. were so unbeliveably nice, that I couldn't stay angry. The P.A. told us that she has a classic buckle fracture in her wrist. If it would have been an adult wrist, the bone would have snapped, but because kids' bones are still soft, her's just buckled, so it wasn't too bad, but is still considered a broken bone. She has to be in a cast for 4 weeks, and then a brace for 4 more weeks. The worst part is, it's her right wrist, and she's right handed, so he told her no more softball this season. While we were checking out she whispered to me that she was going to need to cry when we got home, and I told her she could cry right now if she needed to, so the second we walked out the door she let it go and called Andy to cry to him and called her granny (my mom) to cry to her. She's very much like me when it comes to traumatic experiences -- crying is a must and it has to be discussed several times to work through it. She's much better today, but is still really irritated with it because it's her right hand, and our plan for now is for her to dress for her ballgame today and go cheer on her team from the dugout, but I'm predicting more tears before it's all over!