Well, I was bitten on the arm today, hard enough to break the skin -- which, per district policy, meant I had to go to the worker's comp place and get a blood test.
Being very much not a fan of needles, I was very freaked out about this.
The bite? Meh, not so much. Yeah, it hurt, but here's the thing.
It's not pleasant, but one of the realities of dealing with kids with special needs in general and kids with more severe disabilities in particular is that often they have moments with undesirable behaviors. Most often, those behaviors are an attempt to communicate something, to fill some need, and it's my job as a teacher to teach alternatives.
But you know going into it that there's risk. I've been scratched, had my hair pulled, had my...er...chestal area pinched, been pinched, been head-butted. A friend's foot was broken when one of her kids stomped on it. It truly doesn't bother me -- I'd rather deal with a kid that scratches than a kid that whines all day.
Oddly enough, even though this is my fifth year of teaching, and even though I had a child for two years that bit everybody and everything, including himself, and even though I had a different child for a year and a half who was famous for biting a tree one day, I had never been bitten before.
It hurts, but not for a while. My arm went numb for about twenty minutes, then started to ache. It's swollen now and is going to bruise, but what hurts worse is the spot on my arm where they tried to draw blood and failed (ouch).
So, in my left arm, I have a poke from the Hepatitis B booster they made me take, as well as the poke on the inside of my elbow from where the good technician at the lab took blood. In my right arm, I have my rapidly-swelling tetanus booster (I got it about 4.5 hours ago now and it's already visibly swollen), the very painful poke where the guy at the worker's comp place tried and failed to get my blood, and the bite itself.
Aide J was still out today, which was definitely a blessing. The official Room Mine policy is "don't lie but don't volunteer" because Aide J knowing Bulldozer bit my arm will result in two things: (1) she will freak out and be all falsely mothery over a very-unperturbed me and (2) she will take every opportunity she has to "remind" Bulldozer to be nice and will probably work him back up into meltdown mode.
Meanwhile, my student teacher started today. She hadn't been there 20 minutes when Bulldozer bit me...but she didn't run away, so that's a plus.
And I'm still more concerned over the "four blood tests over six months" policy than I am over the bite itself...that's just a scrape that happened to be caused by teeth.
The office managers think I'm nuts.
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