Swine Flu

Who would have thought that my life would be affected by swine flu? We live in Chautauqua County, which is an extremely rural area of NY. We heard early this week that there was a possible case of swine flu in the county. Then I learned that it was in our school district. Then I learned that I had had contact with the affected student. So besides the stresses of this time of year (mentioned to some extent in a previous post), I became worried about how this might affect me. Had I not been pregnant, I probably wouldn't have been quite as worried, but obviously I have other things to think about now.

Thankfully, the school nurse is also one of my best friends, and when she was on the phone with the health department, she mentioned that two people in the school are pregnant and two have small babies at home, so then I had to talk to the health department and they asked me a few questions about my contact with the student and whether I was having any symptoms, which I'm not.

School is closed tomorrow as a precaution, and everything in the building is being disinfected. We should reopen on Monday, but that will depend on whether or not other students come down with symptoms. The goal is to keep them all apart for the next few days.

While this day off may seem like fun, it's actually kind of terrible because SO MUCH goes on this time of year. Next week I have to give a standardized test for two days, on Wednesday the 6th graders visit our school all day for an orientation day (which means I'm in charge of the schedule and making sure that they have someplace to be every period of the day). On Tuesday we're having a pre-prom assembly (a mock drunk driving accident) that conflicts with the exam I have to give, but since this particular exam is the SAT, there's nothing I can do about it. If school is closed on Monday, I'll have to give the exam on Tuesday and Wednesday, which will conflict with the orientation day. Man, I'll be lucky to survive next week. And I have to order all of the stuff we need for the awards ceremony on June 1st. Oh my goodness, I'm buried...