I should have known when I woke up Monday morning. I felt really congested and my throat was killing me, and I was coughing like crazy. But, since I had an observation later in the day, I shook it off and headed to spin class. Where, by the way, the teacher shared the story of how she had run a marathon YESTERDAY. As in ran 26.2 miles sunday, and was now teaching a spin class at 6am Monday morning. Insane. But I digress. After my workout I felt a bit better, although still congested and lightheaded, so I made my merry way to school. While I drank my usual massive amount of coffee, I checked about 94 times to make sure that every single thing I had prepared for my observation when I left Friday was still prepared. For some reason during observations, I get this feeling that in the middle I will realize that I forgot some hugely important part.
After worrying about it all morning, I picked up my class from lunch and sat them on the carpet, where I started teaching the observation lesson while my AP, SweetiePie came in to watch. It was going pretty well, the kids seemed into it, they were volunteering, behaving MUCH better than during any past observations! It was an unprecedented miracle!
About halfway through, my voice started feeling a little scratchy. Normally I would have done the logical thing and drank some water, maybe took the kids to the bathroom for a break, but I was too busy trying to dazzle during my observation and it honestly never even occurred to me. Also, the lesson was going WAY over the time limit, but that happens every day and actually my principal said it was ok to forsake other subjects for phonics. About an hour and 15 minutes into my hour lesson, when the kids were still supposed to do some dictation, but I told SweetiePie that I had to stop the lesson and take them outside, because at this point I pretty much couldn't get a word out. Luckily, being sweet as she is, she understood and was ok with it, and told me just to finish later and put the work in her mailbox.
I brought the kids outside and another wonderful teacher luckily took over all matters which required speaking (ex. explaining appropriate slide rules) while I chugged water, wondering how an observation where the kids were good, the lesson was good, had somehow still found a way to go wrong - fate? Karma?
By the end of the day I was coughing, still struggling to talk, and feeling exhausted with a headache. I got home, cooked dinner, ignored all other chores that needed to be done and went to bed. I woke up at 5am, realized I felt horrible, and called in sick, using my emergency sub plans. When I called the doctor at 9, they said they were all booked for the week, but got me an emergency appointment, as soon as they "heard" (read: attempted to make out my feeble whispers) my voice.
I went in and a doctor stuck a wooden stick so far up my nose I can only assume he was scraping my brain. The result? Swine flu! Oops I mean H1N1 - of course! The doctor said I had to stay home for four days! I told him we had a field trip Friday, so he said if I felt better, I could go. He gave me a flu prescription - who knew such a thing existed? Now that I have been on the medicine for a day, I am feeling much better but still exhausted and no voice! Hopefully it clears up so I don't have to miss Halloween!! These crazy kids and their germs!