Bat Crap and Happy Accidents

Saturday night I had the living bat crap scared out of me by three very important people in my life. To place the bat crap scaring into the proper context, I've been having facial pain. Eighteen years ago I had an infection in my facial nerve and as a result I was left partially paralyzed on the right side of my face (cue the violins, NOT). Gradually over these years I've regained about 60% of my facial movement back. Last January, when I started teaching my intersession course, which required talking for 4 hours straight, I started having stabbing pains on the paralyzed side of my face. We determined that the reason for the sudden and unexpected pain is that more of my nerve has regenerated and muscles that have been out of commission and therefore were atrophied were now receiving nerve impulses. When a muscle isn't used to receiving nerve stimulation and then it suddenly does, it revolts. It revolts by cramping up and if you've ever had a muscle cramp, you know how much it hurts. Anyway, since I've been back in the classroom (3 weeks) I've started having the facial pain again. I've been dealing with the pain by taking Advil. In fact, I've been taking 600 mg at a time (a total of 1200 - 1800 mg each day). Now back to Saturday night and my bat crap. I was sharing this information with Dan, Greg, and Mona and they proceeded to tell me that taking that dosage would lead to kidney failure. In fact, they told me that there was this professional football player who took 2000 mg per day for 4 weeks and he ended up needing a kidney transplant. To say this panicked me is an understatement. I really like my kidneys. I'm quite attached to my kidneys. I don't want to have to find new kidneys. But I'm in a pickle folks! I'm in pain and on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, when I have to talk for 5 hours straight, I have a really hard time getting through without taking something to take the edge off the pain. So what's a girl to do? Finally I got a clue and called my brother in law Tadd, who happens to be a urologist, so he knows a thing or two about the kidneys and asked him if I had placed my kidneys in jeopardy. Boy I am glad I called him! He very calmly (very good bedside manner) and reassuringly told me that I probably hadn't hurt my kidneys. That taking 1200mg per day as long as I alternate it with some other analgesic, to give my kidneys a slight rest, I won't do any real damage to my kidneys. He also told me that there is a new nerve analgestic that is really good, so I called my neurologist and made an appointment to see him tomorrow.

Today I made an accidental discovery that alleviated a lot of my stress related to my Abnormal Psychology class. I've been mildly obsessed with assigning students to groups and what do I do if someone is absent from class. I've been twisting myself into knots trying to anticipate and deal with students who have planned absences (i.e., athletes) and unplanned absences (i.e., death in the family), both of which have happened in the past week. I've been keeping up relatively well with these absences. Today I received an email from a student who was supposed to present today to her group informing me that she wouldn't be able to make class. What was I going to do? Ask a student from another group to present the case? But if they did that, then they would miss out on the case being presented in their group. This didn't seem like a good solution. So, I said to myself, "what about you? Couldn't you present the case?" To which I answered absolutely. When the class started I informed the group that had the absent member that I'd be presenting the case and they seemed rather pleased with this option. I requested that I present first so that I could use the remaining time being available for the other groups should they need my assistance. I presented the case and then went on with observing and helping the other groups. I noticed that one of the groups was missing a member. I asked the group who was missing and when we determined who the absent student was, it was clear that this student a) hadn't contacted me to let me know she wasn't going to be there, and 2) she hadn't presented her case yet. I asked myself, "what would prevent me from presenting the absent student's case?" I answered myself, "nothing at all." So I presented that case as well. Both groups seemed to really like my presenting a case to the group. As a result, a light bulb went on in my head. In the future, I think I'm going to build into the schedule having me present cases to these groups. It enables me to model how to present a case in a succinct manner and it gives me time with small groups of students. I just love happy accidents like this!