When I had my first back surgery, 20 years ago, I was back at work in just six days. This was a bad idea, but I wasn’t going to get paid otherwise.
When I had an emergency surgery a few years ago, to remove my gallbladder, my students sent me angry emails because I missed that week. I had arranged for subs–the students were on track, but I was being selfish, you see, not to be there myself.
In January, I’m going to have my hysterectomy. The recovery will be 2-4 weeks, and I’m going to use a quarter of Paid Medical Leave so I don’t have to worry about students and subs and pressuring myself to go back too early. Leave has just been approved.
This week has been busy. The Atwood conference was amazing, and my presentation went well. I’m disappointed that I didn’t get to go to Germany and have meals with my fellow conference participants, but it was the best Zoom conference it possibly could have been.
My SCC online class started in the middle of the week. Several students haven’t logged on yet. And I’m having trouble communicating with some of them–my emails and my Canvas messages / announcements are going to spam. Canvas announcements are going to my spam too.
The misplaced messages aren’t the only problems, though. Many students who did get my emails failed to read them properly. I told all the waitlisted students to ask me for a PTA if they wanted to join, only to have a bunch of them respond to that email by asking . . . how they could join.
Sigh.
I got to help give one of my students her award for being published in Prized Writing, which was wonderful.
But my body had to bring some bad news this week, too. This is part of a conversation with my dentist, from my cleaning:
Dentist: So you’re still grinding.
Me: Yup. At night. The other dentist hasn’t given me the new appliance to stop it yet.
Dentist: Well, it seems you’ve ground off two fillings. We’ll have to replace those.
“I told all the waitlisted students to ask me for a PTA if they wanted to join, only to have a bunch of them respond to that email by asking . . . how they could join.”
Yeah, this is my job every day. If there’s anything wrong with the kids these days, it’s (a) not reading and (b) complete inability to Google “how to sign up for summer school” on their own, sigh.
I went to the dentist because I’d chipped a front tooth and wanted someone to smooth the sharp part of the remaining tooth. He told me about how dentists have long assumed that grinding happens at night based on what patients report. It’s now part of the profession’s accepted lore so most dentists also think tooth grinding is primarily happening at night. But he says most people who grind teeth do it during the day without realizing it. He told me that my front top and front bottom teeth should never touch. The dentist also mentioned something about how human minds work. It’s really difficult to stop doing something. It’s much easier to do something else instead. So when someone is told “Don’t do X,” it’s hard to succeed. Much better is when someone is told “Do Y instead of X.” So he told me that every time I notice my front teeth touching, I should instead focus on putting the tip of tongue between my front and bottom top teeth.
I’m not sure if you’re one of the people who is subconsciously grinding during the day. But if you are perhaps this is worth thinking or asking about!
I’m not. I’ve had TMJ pain since I was 12, so I am really careful. I don’t chew gum & I’m careful with my teeth when I’m awake. I know I’m doing it at night: I wake up with my bottom teeth trying to shove my top front teeth out of my mouth.